Just Lock Them in a Room and Make Them Talk!
by Googie
Summary: Based on an idea from the chat during 'The Limey'. What if Beckett and Castle were locked in a room together by their friends and family, and weren't allowed to come out until they talked honestly? Rated M for future potential.
1. Prologue

_**I got this idea from the chat during "The Limey", after all of the frustration that was that episode. It's meant to be somewhat humorous and totally unrealistic. If you want my version of angsty realism, read "Tell".**_

_**Disclaimer: Yeah, you know. Seriously, if I did, would I be writing this? Really?**_

* * *

"Come on, Javi," Beckett said as she stepped off the elevator. "Do we really have to do this? I'm tired, and I finally get three solid days off in a row. I just want to go home, take a bath and crawl into bed." And forget about my _former_ partner and his string of bimbettes, she thought, not be stuck in his house doing an errand for his mother. Kate knew that with her luck, he'd probably be sitting there making out with a bimbette or something equally indicative of his recent change in lifestyle.

"Just take a look at whatever she wants, Beckett. Mama Castle specifically requested us. And you know, I like the old girl. And I know you do too."

"Don't let her hear you call her an 'old girl'," she warned with a smile. While she didn't know what was going on with Castle at the moment, nor did she like it, she harbored no ill will toward his mother. She liked Martha and all of her flamboyant eccentricities.

He winked at her as they walked down the hall. "Got it. And don't worry. Hopefully this won't take too long. Then you can have that bath or...crawl into bed." He paused and let out a little cough. "Or whatever."

His voice sounded a little strange, and frankly, he looked a little strange right then. "You okay, Javi?" Beckett asked.

"Yeah, fine." He tried the door, finding it open. "Mrs. R said she'd leave the door open for us."

They walked into the loft, and at first it appeared to be empty, but then she saw a smiling Martha Rodgers sashay down the stairs, wearing a loose caftan in a print so loud with colors so bright that Beckett was sure it could make a sleeping person wake up.

"Ah, Kate, and Detective Esposito! Thank you so much for coming over to help me with this little...problem."

"Esposito said something about strange noises, Martha?"

"Yes, dear. In the spare bedroom upstairs. We don't go in there very much, but lately... Faint thumps and eerie moans...it's dreadful, really." She held a hand to her forehead in dramatic fashion. "I just don't know what to make of it."

"But Martha, we're homicide detectives, not the Ghostbusters. If you have strange noises, wouldn't it be better to call someone who...specializes more in that type of thing? I'm sure Castle has some contacts that would fit the bill better then we would."

"Nonsense, dear. You're exactly the person we need for this. In fact, I think there wouldn't be anyone better suited." She winked at the detective. "I have faith in you, dear." Then she turned to Esposito. "Don't you agree, Detective?"

"Whatever you say, Mrs. R." For some reason, it almost seemed to Kate as if Esposito was communicating with Martha on some other level only known to the two of them. She felt like she was missing something, but she couldn't fathom what. Martha and Esposito? They were friendly, and she knew Espo got a kick out of Castle's mother, but it wasn't like they were best buddies or anything.

With that, Martha turned around and headed back up the stairs, leaving the two detectives to follow her. She paused at the door to the spare bedroom, and then turned around. "Now, like I said, I have utter faith in you, dear. And of course, you too, Detective Esposito. But what's inside that room," she said as she gave a dramatic shudder, "might shock you. But I know that you can make this right."

Beckett didn't know what to think anymore. Between her own fatigue, her emotional upheavel from Castle's abrupt personality change over the past several weeks, Esposito acting weird, and Martha acting...like Martha, she felt like she couldn't really keep up anymore. But the quicker she got this over with, the quicker she could get to that bath. "Well, Martha, let's get this over with. Do you think I'll need my gun?" she asked jokingly.

A sudden worried look passed over Martha's face. "Well, dear, now that you mention it, you probably should leave it out here." Kate was surprised because Martha's response was anything but joking. She...did she look worried?

Bath. She wanted that bath. She wanted to relax. And to do this, she needed to placate Martha and put her so-called fears at ease so she could get the heck out of here. So she unstrapped her holster and laid the whole thing on the hall table. And as she did that, she became aware of...yes, those _were_ noises coming from inside the room! Martha actually wasn't being dramatic? There really _was_ something in the room?

"Martha..." she said, looking at the door, making it obvious that she'd heard something. And then there it was again; a faint thump, followed by a strange...hum, or something.

"See, dear?" The older woman did look worried.

"Martha, if you have...strange things in one of the bedrooms, then why isn't Castle here? I mean...strange noises? Ghosts? In his own house. That's right up his alley."

"He was...detained, dear. But I'm sure he'll be along shortly." She looked to the door again. "I'm going to open the door now, but I'm going to stand back while you go in. Just tell me what you see, and when you get everything sorted out, you can come out, okay?"

She gave Martha a sideways look before nodding her assent. Martha was definitely unusual, that was for sure. Martha grabbed the doorknob. She seemed to rattle it a bit before she opened it slowly. However, she only opened it a matter of mere inches before she stepped back and motioned to Kate to enter the room.

After giving Martha another look, Beckett looked at Esposito, who just shrugged at her, as if to say, 'Just humor her. How bad could it be?' So she pushed on the door and walked a few cautious steps into the room. And as she took in the sight in front of her, she froze.

It was no ghost, or goblin, or gremlin.

She tried to make her mind make sense of what she was seeing, but for a few seconds, all she could do was gape.

Because in front of her was Richard Castle, laying on the queen-sized bed in the room.

With duct tape over his mouth.

With both wrists handcuffed to the bed frame.

_That_ was definitely not what she expected to find. She didn't know what she did expect to find, but it certainly wasn't that.

"Castle?" she exclaimed, too stunned to move for a moment. But then her feet were propelling her across the room toward him. She was confused when his head was violently shaking from side to side and the hums coming from under the duct tape were increasing in frequency and volume. Belatedly, as she was trying to figure out what he was trying to tell her, she realized she heard footsteps from behind her, and she only turned around in time to see a black-haired flash of a person scurry out the door, pulling it closed behind her.

Lanie? Was that just Lanie? Why would Lanie be here? And why did she leave?

Beckett walked back over to the door through which the supposed Lanie had just exited, temporarily forgetting the thrashing and humming Castle on the bed. And as she pulled on the door to follow the disappearing Lanie, she was stunned to find it...

Locked.

Locked?

Her head flipped around and looked at Castle, still laying on the bed. He'd stopped humming, and now had his head leaning back against the metal rails of the headboard in defeat.

She was locked in here.

Why was she locked in a room with a handcuffed and duct taped Castle, in his own house, no less? What the hell was going on here?

* * *

_**So now, more background (which you can probably figure out from the title anyway): After he kept rebuffing her and leaving and flaunting blondes at her during "The Limey", I said that someone just needs to lock them in a room together and **__**make**__** them talk, and not let them out until they do. One of the other people on the chat (AndrewA?) said that I should write a fanfic about it, so here it is.**_

_**Like I said, it's not meant to be realistic at all. I think I'd classify it under wishful thinking, so we can eliminate the angst of her not knowing why he's pulling away and of him thinking she was embarrassed by his declaration after she was shot. Eliminate the angst, get to the good stuff, right?**_

_**If there's enough interest, I'll continue this and you can find out exactly how Castle came to be handcuffed to the bed in his own guest room.**_

_**And remember, you can follow me on twitter and tumblr if you want; handy if/when alerts at this site go down. I'm xxGoogiexx for both sites. **_


	2. Locked

_**Wow! What an incredible response to the prologue for this story! Really insane, but in a wonderful way. My inbox was just overwhelmed with alert notifications! I'm so glad so many of you seemed to like this story. Given the subject matter, it's angsty by itself, so there are bound to be some angsty overtones, but I'll try to keep them down in favor of the other stuff.**_

_**Don't know if anyone caught it in the prologue because it was toward the beginning, but did anyone notice how Esposito's mind went into the gutter just a bit? Go back the part about when she's talking about taking a bath and going to bed. He knows what's coming, so when he tells her that she can have that bath or crawl into bed...or whatever (with the cough), he's hoping that if things go according to plan, she just might have some company with those things (cough cough).**_

_**Slight spoilers for "Headhunters", and of course what happened in "47 Seconds" and "The Limey".**_

_**Disclaimer: yeah, you know.**_

* * *

She pulled on the door and twisted the knob a few more times with no success. "Lanie!" she shouted through the door. "Esposito! Martha?" There was no response. "Come on, you guys, what's going on here?" Still, there was no response, except for, of course, the frantic humming coming from the man behind her.

She turned around and stalked back over to where Castle was laying on the bed. She leaned down by him, face to face. "While normally I wouldn't actually mind your mouth being incapacitated like this, I guess I have to remove the tape if I want to find out what the hell is going on around here. So," she asked, putting her hand by the edge of the tape, "fast or slow?"

He paused to think about it, and then hummed at her.

"Sorry, I don't speak 'duct tape hum'. Just nod, okay? So...fast?"

He nodded. And before he was finished with the last of his nods, the tape was ripped from his face with a loud smacking sound. "Ahhhh yaaaa yiiii owwwww ow ow! Geez, that never gets any easier!"

She rolled her eyes. "Figures you'd have had your mouth duct taped before."

He worked his lips from side to side, trying to get the tingling to go away. "Book research. Beckett, the cuffs too, please? Keys are on the nightstand."

She regarded him suspiciously, shaking her head. "Not until you tell me what's going on."

"Huh? Isn't it obvious? They locked us in here."

"Who's they?"

"Everyone." She glared at him, silently demanding more of an answer. "_Everyone_. My mother, Lanie, Esposito...wasn't he out in the hall with you? I think Ryan was around here somewhere too. Alexis-"

"Alexis?" she interrupted. "Your daughter? _She_ was in on this?"

"My daughter is the only Alexis we both know, isn't she, Beckett?" he asked sarcastically. "But yes, my daughter. Who do you think cuffed me to the bed?" he asked, somewhat sheepishly, with a frustrated edge to his voice.

"Lanie!" she answered. It was the natural conclusion when she'd glimpsed the ME scurrying from the room a few minutes ago.

"No, the scary doctor came in _after_ my lovely and conniving daughter tricked me! And then our Doctor Parish treated me to a verbal tongue-lashing. Not sure what I did to her to deserve that!" He shook his head, obviously affronted by whatever she'd said. "But man, she really needs to get out more. She's getting to be as surly as Perlmutter. Must be something about working around dead people all day."

But Beckett wasn't even thinking about what he'd said about Lanie; she was fixated on what he'd said about Alexis. She let out a laugh before she could help herself, staring at him as if he'd just announced that he was building a house on his property on the moon. "No way. Alexis hand-" She had to stop for a moment to take a breath, because she felt the laughter bubbling up in her at how preposterous that sounded. She started again, hoping she could keep a straight face. "Alexis-your daughter-handcuffed you to a _bed_?" The last word came out as a bit of a squeak as she gave in to some of the laughter that had bubbled over. "Castle, that's just..."

"Yes, I know what it is, Beckett. Don't even say it. My daughter seeing me handcuffed to a bed was not a father-daughter moment that I'd ever dreamed of sharing with her, okay? So can you just undo the cuffs now, please? So I don't have to think any more about how I happened to get into this predicament?"

"Nah uh, Castle. I need answers. And I think the only way to get them is to leave you cuffed like you are."

"Beckett," he whined. "What if I have to pee?"

"Hold it," she ordered, crossing her arms and glaring at him. "Now talk. Tell me how you let yourself be cuffed to a bed and duct taped by an eighteen year old wisp of a girl."

"She tricked me!" he protested. Beckett just raised an eyebrow at him, letting him know no sympathy would be forthcoming until she heard more. He huffed out a breath. "She told me that she was trying to write a short mystery story for a school project, and she needed me to help her do some research on how the protagonist was..." He made a face, crinkling his nose and grimacing oddly a few times. "Hey, Beckett? Can you scratch the top of my nose? It itches and I can't reach it."

She narrowed her eyes, thinking about what he'd said about Alexis before moving forward to lightly touch her fingertips to his nose. "Isn't she done with almost all of her classes? And the one she does have...it doesn't have anything to do with writing, if I remember correctly."

He was momentarily frozen by how much she knew about Alexis' school schedule. How did she know all of that? _Why_ did she know all of that? "Ahhh...Thanks," he told her for the nose assistance, and then, "And yes, that's right about Alexis."

She continued to regard him through those narrowed eyes. "Ahhh, I see. _You_ didn't remember that just then, did you?" She pointed her finger at him. "Let me guess, your ego got in the way of your logical thought processes, right? She says she needs your help for researching a writing project...I just bet you were all over that one, lending your vast expertise and words of wisdom, and you never realized that she was playing you."

Her words made his eyes go big for just a second, and he muttered, "Yeah, I seem to have a problem with that lately." Then he recovered and said, "Yes, Beckett, in my joy at having my child express an interest in my chosen field of work, I neglected to reason out if her request was logical, okay? I should have channeled my inner Spock. Happy? So are you going to unlock me now?"

She looked to the ceiling and shook her head. "Happy? No, not really, because I'm still stuck in here, and I'm still not sure why." But she leaned forward to grab the keys, unlocking the first one and then walking around the bed to unlock the second one.

Once they were unlocked, he freed himself from the restraints and got off the bed to stretch, massaging his wrists as she paced in the room.

Finally, she looked at him, fire in her eyes. "Did you have something to do with this?"

He had the grace to look affronted. "Me? Why would _I_ have anything to do with this? Are you insane?"

"I wish I was. Then maybe I could find something amusing about all of this." She looked around the room. "What the hell were they all thinking?" That was the million dollar question, wasn't it? She would have never bet that Lanie and the boys would stoop so low as to try something like this.

"How am I supposed to know?" Castle's voice was exasperated, mirroring her own.

"Well, considering we're locked in _your_ guest room and we know that _your_ mother and daughter obviously in on it...yeah, it stands to reason that you would know something."

"Well, I _don't,_"he told her petulantly. "And most of the time, I don't claim to know what my mother or daughter are thinking. And what about you, huh? It's obvious that _your_ friends were in on this too."

"_My_ friends? I thought they were your friends too, Castle. God, you even stood up in Ryan's wedding. Why'd you do that if you didn't consider him a friend?" She thought that by now... God, it was just another thing to add to the way he'd changed lately. First the parade of women, but then when he'd, as Ryan had phrased it, started cheating on them with Slaughter, it had entered a whole new level.

"Well, sure, I guess they're my friends, but-"

"You _guess_? Well, if that's all the last three years mean to you, then I suppose it's no wonder that you'd seek out some other team," she told him with some snark.

"I _told _you...that's just temporary. Oh, and did I tell you what Slaughter did when he found that suspect who..." he trailed off as he saw the look on her face. "Okay, fine then. Another time."

"Good choice. I prefer not to discuss Detective Slaughter's rather unorthodox methods right now, thank you."

They were silent for a while, and Beckett was grateful for it. What had happened to the Castle she knew and...that she'd gotten to know for all of these years?

"I wonder how long they're going to keep us in here," he wondered aloud as he walked over to the door and once again pulled on it futilely. "I have a date tonight."

Well, that answered it..._that_ other Castle was evidently not in this room, Beckett thought as she looked up at the ceiling in annoyance, a sour look on her face. "Why yes," she said sarcastically. "I'm sure you do. You're just quite the social butterfly these days, aren't you?" The venom dripping from her words was unmistakable.

He turned to look at her with narrowed eyes. "What? Can't I go out on a date with an interesting woman?"

She made another face as she looked away, not able to hide her disdain. "You seem to be finding a lot of 'interesting' women these days."

"So?" he prompted. "What's wrong with that?" He just wanted to move on with his life after he found out that she lied to him, so what did she care anyway? She should be relieved, not acting all jeal...uh, mad about it. Yeah, he thought, that's what it was. She was mad because she didn't have the ego boost from having him hang on her every word anymore. He was making his own life again, apart from her and the precinct. It was what she wanted, right? Obviously, he thought, or she wouldn't have lied to him.

He took his phone out of his pocket, saying absently, "I'll call her and tell her that I'll be...huh." He held up his phone so she could see it. "Look at this."

"What now?" She really hoped he wasn't showing her a picture of one of his new girlfriends.

"It appears that I have text messages from several of our culprits. Wonder what they say?" he asked teasingly, waving his phone at her before he sat down on the bed. He opened the first message and made a big show of reading it, causing her to roll her eyes at him once again. But despite her better judgment, she sat down next to him and leaned close to him so she could see his phone. If those messages gave Castle a clue as to why they were both in here, then dammit, she wanted to know about it!

* * *

_**More explanation in the next chapter of how they got there. And of course, more of their current predicament.**_

_**Love all of the interest in the prologue! Tons of thanks to the people who reviewed it...you're the best! It really warms my heart, and it's for you that I got this next chapter out so quickly. **_

_**Now, a question: would you, the readers, prefer to have this just be about B/C locked in the room, or would you like to see any discussions between the team of conspirators? **_

_**For other updates or whatever, I'm xxGoogiexx on twitter or xxGoogiexx on tumblr.**_

_**Hope you liked it. Thanks for reading, and let me know what you think!**_


	3. Messages

_**Wow...continued amazing response for this and another quick update as a big thanks to all who reviewed. I hope the chapter lives up to your expectations.**_

_**A note about chapters: I've never before had a prologue, so when I named the chapters, I didn't realize how stupid it would look when the site sends out alerts and puts which chapter it is for system purposes. So for the last chapter, it said "Chapter 2: Chapter 1," which looked ridiculous to me. So I'm going to go out on a limb and try to name my chapters.**_

_**Disclaimer: Still doing this and I'm not in California. There's your answer.**_

* * *

"Who's that one from? What does it say?"

"It's from my mother," he announced as he looked at the message on his phone. "Hey, did I hear her out in the hall before you came in here?" And at the end of the question, he turned toward her, only for them both to find that their faces were in very close proximity to each other since she was leaning close to him, trying to read the messages. They stared at each other, and for just a split second, she thought she saw one of those old flickers of desire in his eyes, what she'd seen often enough before last May, but hadn't been ready to acknowledge then. When she saw it then, if she hadn't been so taken aback by it, she would have felt like cheering because there, _there_, was a flicker of her old Castle. But quicker than a flash, he shuttered his eyes again into that bland, indifferent expression while simultaneously leaning back and away from her. "Personal space, huh, Beckett?"

Personal space? _He_ was whining about personal space when _he'd_ been the one breaching _her_ personal space for the last three years? Who _was_ this man?

But she wasn't going to let him win. "Stop whining and show me the message."

He held the phone out to her, while still leaning away from her. She took the phone and began to read the message:

_'Do you like our set, Richard? You and Kate are the stars of this play. It's time to stop being silly now. Create your own story. You have everything you need. WE all know how it should end. Now both of you have to figure it out.'_

She read the message and looked back at Castle. "What the hell does that mean?"

"Don't look at me!" he protested.

"She's your mother!" she argued back.

"Since when have I ever claimed to understand her?" She got up from the bed and stood there watching him, as he turned his attention back to his phone and scrolled to the next one, a message from Alexis. "Ah, the voice of reason." At her puzzled look, he clarified, "Alexis. Well, reasonable relative to my mother, of course," he amended after remembering that his daughter was the reason he was locked in a room with Beckett.

"Oh, good. Maybe she'll tell you how much she enjoyed handcuffing her father to a bed," she told him, enunciating each word clearly, unable to stop the smirk from entering her expression.

"Ha ha," he told her before turning his focus to the message. "She's probably going to...oh. _Ohhhh_. Really?" And then, as he read more of her message, he gave a more forceful: "But, A-LEX-is!" While reading the message, he was making vocalizations almost like his daughter was right there to hear him.

"What?" Kate asked, looking over his shoulder at the phone.

'_Don't like how you've been acting lately with all of your dates and partying. Not good, Dad. So you're locked in here with Det. Bkt till you stop acting like you're in a college frat house. Consider it a forced introspectional retreat. I want my real dad back.'_

'Whoa,' Kate thought. Well, it was certainly obvious that they could count Castle's family among those not enamored with his new lifestyle. But why punish _her_ by sticking Castle with her? She continued reading the text:

_'You two need to talk b/c even Dr. Prsh says things are bad with you two. Fix this. Alone. You're in there until you do. No phones, no internet. Signals are blocked.'_

"What?" Kate exclaimed when she read the last part. Well, if Alexis and Lanie were talking, that would explain why she was stuck in here with Castle.

"How would she block the signals?" he asked, looking up at her. "How would she even know _how_ to block the signals?"

"I...maybe she just thinks she does, but she doesn't really know how?" she surmised? She grabbed her phone and found no signal. "Damn. I don't have a signal on my phone."

"I don't either. But how did we get the texts?"

"I don't know! Did she send them and then turn off the communications?"

"Where did she learn all of this?" Castle asked, gaping at her. "I mean, it almost sounds like she was-"

And the lightbulb went on in both of their heads. "Ryan!" they said in unison.

"You said you thought he was around here. And Ryan _would_ know how to do something like that."

"I thought I heard him after Lanie yelled at me and stormed out," he pouted, flashing back to what Lanie had said after Alexis had cuffed him to the bed. After Alexis had left the room, satisfied over her successful attempt at fooling her father, Lanie wasted no time in yelling at him that he was acting like a rich, spoiled brat who wanted to rub it in everyone's faces about how cool he was. Once she got started, she was on a roll and he could hardly keep up with her. He'd never seen her so worked up. She kept going on about how he had great friends and family and what does he do? He acts like an ass, parades bimbos in front of Kate and his daughter, and then ditches his team for some half-psycho, bad-ass, nutjob giant who was going to get him killed probably sooner rather than later. And she didn't need another body in her morgue, thank you very much. So he needed to shape his ass up, open his eyes and look at was was right in front of him. And then she just sat there and glared at him.

Once his mind could process what she said, he remembered her comment about 'parading bimbos in front of Kate and his daughter'. Alexis...he could understand that. Obviously she and Lanie talked. He knew Alexis had never liked some of the women he'd dated, or his 'public' persona, and he'd tried to keep that away from her. But...he supposed he hadn't been doing too good of a job of that lately, if she'd actually noticed and had even talked to Lanie about it. But he still didn't understand why she threw Beckett's name in with his daughter's name. Beckett shouldn't care if he went out. It wasn't like she wanted him anyway. And it wasn't like _her_ boyfriends never came to the precinct. Sheesh. Double standard.

"So," Beckett asked him, bringing him back to the present, "are you ever going to tell me about this supposed tongue-lashing from Lanie?"

He looked at her, thought back to what Lanie said, and then said resolutely, "No." No way was she getting a recap of that.

She gave him an odd look. What was his problem? Changing topics, she asked, "Okay then, if we can't call or text, and they won't let us out, then what about a key? You have to have a key, right? This _is_ your house."

"Alexis told me they put a new deadbolt on the door, just for this. And I don't have a key for it," he admitted grudgingly. "And don't even think about trying to break down _that_ door unless you want to end up in physical therapy." Then he turned back to his phone, murmuring, "Hmmm...another message from Alexis, sent right after the last one," while he tapped at his phone.

She watched in stunned amazement as, about a second after he started reading it, his eyes got big and he all but vaulted across the bed to the door on the other side of the room, which presumably held a closet. He threw open the door and after walking inside, he started exclaiming, "Oh, no. No, no _no_!"

At his outburst, she was right on his heels. "Castle...what? Did Lanie leave a dead body for you? A bomb or something?"

"No...look! Just _look_ at this!" He stepped back and for the second time in the last hour, she was walking through a door in Castle's house not knowing what to expect. And for the second time, what she found was something she never would have imagined finding.

"I...uh. Huh." Was all she could manage to get out.

Food. And what looked to be something like a small kitchenette.

There was a dormitory-sized refrigerator sitting on the floor, as well as a small microwave that was sitting on a small table nearby. Next to that was an electric griddle and a small coffee maker. There were cans, boxes, bottles and bags of food and drink on the shelves, as well as a few plates and various utensils. Then her brain caught up with what she was seeing, and more specifically, why she was seeing it. "Castle..." she said in a warning tone. She whipped her head around toward him, and found him holding up his phone for her to read the text, a grim, resigned look on his face.

'_And if it takes a long time for you to come to your senses, you won't starve. Look in closet. Gone for few days, me to Paige's and Grams to the Plaza. Phone on microwave for emergencies; will only dial me. Bye.'_

She looked back up at him, the shock on her own face mirroring his. "Days?" she squeaked. "They're not letting us out, are they? I mean, there's...there's _food_, Castle!" She looked back to the closet and caught sight of something. "And...oh, my God, is that my bag?" She leaned down and unzipped it, finding a folded piece of paper on top of what appeared to be her clothes. She opened the note to find Lanie's handwriting, telling her that she packed some clothes so Kate would be more comfortable during her stay in Casa Castle. And the smiley face next to where Lanie signed her name actually annoyed her to no end. This was _not_ a situation where a smiley face was appropriate. She turned back around to face Castle.

"She packed me clothes, Castle!" Kate told him, a tone of bewilderment in her voice.

He looked over her shoulder and bobbed his head toward a shelf on the wall that held a stack of folded clothing. "Looks like I have some too."

She ran her fingers through her hair. "So I'm apparently not only locked in this room with you, but I have to stay here for God knows how long? What are we going to do, Castle?"

He looked thoughtful for a moment, and then shrugged. "Well, I can attest to the fact that there's no tiger, so that's a plus."

She rolled her eyes. "That's the best you can come up with? No tiger?"

He tried to look thoughtful again. Then he snapped his fingers. "Oh, I've got it. Since we both have clothes, we could put on each other's clothes and try cross-dressing."

She swatted him lightly on the arm and glared at him. "Would you be serious?" Then, determined to give Lanie a piece of her mind, she pulled her phone out of her pocket before remembering that she had no signal. But after she unlocked it, she saw what she hadn't seen before...she, too, had a text, but hers was from Lanie. "Oh, Lanie texted me. I wonder what _she_ has to say." She stalked out of the closet as she opened the message.

Rick watched with curiosity as her eyes got slightly more rounded as she read the message. But then all of a sudden, she clicked her phone off and quickly shoved it back into her pocket, looking somewhat agitated. Then she looked around the room, and as her eyes fell on Rick, she froze.

What a strange reaction to a message, he thought. So he asked her, "Everything okay? What did Lanie's message say?"

"Just...uh...more of the same." Her eyes darted down to the floor and around the room before coming back to him. "That we're locked in here together. Uh...yeah."

And then she walked back to the closet, muttering something about checking out the food, while Rick stood there, wondering what was in that text message from Lanie that had her so frazzled.

* * *

_**Haven't done this in a while, but I just couldn't resist with the 'she packed me clothes' comment...I'm visualizing the "She took my coffee, Castle!" comment from Nikki Heat...the befuddled attitude and everything.**_

_**I tried to let a little more of the 'normal' Castle come out in this chapter. Hope you saw him. I think if he really was locked in a room with Beckett, he wouldn't be able to keep up the casual, unaffected pretense forever.**_

_**Incredible amounts of story alerts so far, but remember, that little message that I get from doesn't tell me what you like, so reviews are golden, and are wonderfully motivating and greatly appreciated. Unless, of course, your keyboard doesn't work so you can't type anything. If that's the case, I'll give you a pass. For now. :)**_


	4. DoubleTalk

_**You're all so awesome in your support of this fic that if this chapter is half as awesome as you are, I'll be happy. Of course, if it turns out to be really awesome, I'll take that too.**_

_**Extremely minor spoilers for something that was very lightly and subtley implied in an interview about the upcoming "Headhunters".**_

_**Disclaimer: Anything recognizable doesn't belong to me.**_

* * *

Rick watched her stalk-yes, she stalked-into the closet. Kate Beckett definitely had a purpose, and he'd bet money that it wasn't to check out the food in the closet.

But what purpose could she have?

He looked around the room. It was a pretty spacious room; all of the rooms in his loft were comfortably spacious. But he supposed that it was starting to sink into her mind that she was stuck in the room with _him_ and no matter how spacious it was, there was probably anywhere else she'd rather be.

So yeah, her stalking had probably been her escaping. From him.

And frankly, he wouldn't mind being somewhere else too. If his mother was in on this, what in the world was the woman thinking? She knew how he felt about Beckett. She's the one who told him it would be hard to be around Beckett, feeling like he did, knowing she didn't feel the same way. So why on earth would she conspire with everyone else to lock him in a room with the woman? Had she gone insane?

And to top it all off, right now his mother was probably charging her room at The Plaza to him. Hell, knowing her, she'd probably gotten a suite.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

'Oh, God,' was all she could think, over and over again. Lanie...her message...when she read it, it hit it home for her that she was stuck in this room for the foreseeable future with Castle, the man who couldn't seem to stand her all of a sudden. The man who said he loved her all of those months ago, but who was now dating all of the blonde bimbos he could find. Kate had almost told him how she felt that night weeks ago, and then he drove up with that blonde. What was she going to do? How was she going to handle this...this forced proximity to him? She knew what Lanie thought she should do. But Lanie didn't have to actually do it, so she could think and pack clothes and sass all she wanted. That was the easy part. But at least Lanie had apparently given Castle a piece of her mind. And she probably let him have it, too, or he would have been a little bit more forthcoming with the contents of the conversation with Kate. Thinking about it, Kate smiled just a little bit, because aside from this whole 'lock them in a room together' thing, she'd really have to thank Lanie for yelling at Castle. It was high time someone did.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Downstairs in the loft, the co-conspirators were getting ready to vacate the loft for the next few days. They spoke in hushed tones so their upstairs captives wouldn't know that they were still on the premises.

"Darling, he'll be fine. And he has that cute little emergency phone, and you tested it, so you know he can call you if he needs you." Martha's hands were on Alexis' shoulders as she spoke, and then she pulled her into a hug for more reassurance.

"I just wish you would have taken a picture of him handcuffed to the bed," Ryan interrupted softly.

"Yeah, we can always use some new Castle blackmail photos," Esposito agreed.

Alexis pulled back from her grandmother's arms. "Thanks for your help with the signal scrambler," she told Ryan. "That was really cool. That was the one thing that we couldn't figure out...how to get their phones away from them. But the beauty of it is that we didn't have to."

"How did you hatch this whole scheme of yours anyway?" Esposito wanted to know. "You never really did tell us."

Lanie stepped in. "Alexis and I just had a little talk when it was obvious her father was starting to act like a jackass again." She looked at Alexis. "Sorry, honey."

"Why? It's true. It _is_ how he was acting. God, flying to Vegas for the weekend to gamble and party? I don't remember him _ever_ doing that before," Alexis remembered.

"Yeah, he's changed, but what made you think to lock him in with Beckett? He's been ditching her lately too," Ryan observed.

Martha and Lanie shared a look, and then Martha stepped in. She didn't fully break her son's confidence about his post-gunshot declaration to the detective, nor did Lanie break Kate's confidence. But once Alexis and her worries about her father's behavior got Martha the the ME together, the two older women were able to piece enough together to know that the writer and his muse needed to talk. And talk, and talk. Once they started discussing the issues between the hardheaded pair, it appeared that both felt the same feelings for the other, but through a series of ill-timed events and general miscommunication (or plain lack of communication), they were farther apart than ever. Both women knew the pair just needed to talk, but to do that, they couldn't run away from each other or be interrupted.

"Let's just say, fellas," Martha told the guys, "that we realized that both Kate and Richard haven't been entirely honest with each other. Richard is acting out because of that, and Lanie said that Beckett is quite unhappy with the way he's acting. But we knew they won't be honest with each other unless they're forced to be. So hence, we've conspired to lock them together where they can't avoid each other, and then the truth will come out. And," she added with a smirk, "we think that when they _are_ finally honest with each other, they'll rather enjoy being trapped in a room together."

Alexis held up a hand. "Grams, _please_ don't go any further with that thought. I'm in on this plan, especially if it's going to make Dad happy and normal again. But I've really been trying to block the only-one-bed-in-the-room thing out of my mind, okay?"

Esposito coughed behind his hand, trying to hide a smile.

Martha laughed quietly as she shrugged herself into her coat and pulled her suitcase over by the door. "Ah, my girl. I'll defer to you and I won't go any farther with that thought. But," she added, "you have to promise to call me when your father uses that cute little emergency phone. Because you know he will. And I simply _have_ to know what he says."

"Call me, too," Ryan interjected. "I wanna know what's going on. Within reason, that is."

"Count me in," Esposito added.

"Girl, you call me before you call them or I'm gonna give you the smelly bodies," Lanie jokingly threatened.

Alexis looked at the guys as she picked up her bag and started to open the door to the loft. "Sorry, guys, after that threat, she gets the first call after Grams."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick was checking out the bathroom, wondering if they had enough supplies (man, he certainly hoped they were well stocked with toilet paper!) when he heard his name being called from the bedroom area. He walked back in the bedroom, still holding the bottle of bubble bath that he'd been looking at, to find a mirthful Kate Beckett holding something ridiculously pink, with some white. Her demeanor was totally opposite from the agitated woman who had stalked into the closet under the auspices of looking for food; she looked like she was trying to restrain herself from laughing hysterically.

"What?" he asked.

"Your emergency phone? You know, what Alexis mentioned in her text? I found it." She almost couldn't get the words out. She walked over to stand near him.

"And? What's so funny?"

"Alexis...she got you a...a...Hello Kitty phone!" And then she did collapse in laughter, right on the bed, right after shoving the phone at him.

He quickly grabbed the pink plastic thing in his free hand, grateful that he didn't drop their only means of communication with the outside world. And when he got a good look at it, he could see that it was one of those 'first phones' that you give a small child, the kind where only one or a few numbers can be called. So the parents, or in this case, he thought wryly, the daughter, sets it up, and the caller is restricted as to who he could call. And apparently the cause of Kate's mirth was that the phone itself was shaped like the 'Hello Kitty' animated character. And it was extremely pink. Well, Kitty's clothes were pink.

If Alexis had to get an animated character, couldn't she have gotten Spiderman? Or the Green Lantern?

And Kate, still laughing on the bed, was undoubtably having a nervous breakdown. Because he didn't think the phone was _that_ funny. In fact, he didn't think it was funny at all. Which he told her.

"I fail to see what's funny about this, Beckett."

She sat up and calmed her snickers. "No, Castle," she tried to say seriously, "It's not funny. It's _hilarious_!" At his glower, she told him, "Come on, your daughter trapped you in a room by handcuffing you to a bed. Then that same daughter gave you a Hello Kitty phone. She even has bling on the collar! You have to admit that's pretty funny."

"No," he said haughtily, with mock affront, "I do not."

She rolled her eyes. "Well, considering I'm trapped in this room right along with you when you can't even seem to stand me anymore, I figure I need something to laugh about right now. So this seems like a pretty good start, if you ask me." Her voice was all about casual ribbing, but despite that, certain parts of her statement jumped out at him.

By the time she'd finished talking, the look in his eyes had changed from annoyed embarrassment over the pink phone to...something else. Surprise?

His eyebrows furrowed as he asked her, "You think I can't stand you anymore?"

Time seemed to stop when he asked his question, as did her breathing. Her mind replayed her words. Oh, Lord, had she said that out loud? But from the look on his face, she knew she did.

It was obvious he was waiting for an answer. "I...uh...well...yeah, kind of." She looked down at her lap, and then got up and slipped by him toward the closet. She'd never intended to say that; it had just slipped out. And now that it had, she thought it made her sound like she was whining. And she wasn't a whiner. If he didn't want her, then she wasn't going to beg. And she wasn't going to let him know how much it bothered her, how much it hurt her that he was pulling away. She was just going to have to be a lot more careful with what came out of her mouth.

Change of subject, diversion-that was what she needed. "So, it's getting late," she said over her shoulder. "We should probably look into having some dinner." And she was off to their closet kitchen before he could formulate a response.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Rick didn't talk much during their dinner prep; what she said about him not being able to stand her was still running through his mind. He was surprised and taken aback by the hurt he'd heard in her voice when she initially said the words, and then her discomfort when she'd basically confirmed it. After they made their dinner, they realized there wasn't really a good place to eat, so they spread a towel on the floor and ate picnic-style. When they'd been eating in silence for several minutes, he broached her comment again.

"I'm puzzled about something. Why did you say that you think I can't stand you anymore?"

She froze with her sandwich halfway to her mouth. Slowly she set it down, and then looked at him. "You're different lately. You're always running off..." on dates with bimbos, she added silently to herself, and then continued out loud, "You just don't seem to have time for us anymore."

"Is this because of Slaughter?" Rick knew she wasn't fond of the big detective from the Gangs Division; she'd made that abundantly clear.

"No, it's because of you! You hardly ever come in, at least to homicide. You won't even go out for drinks with us anymore. You seem like you're on this new quest to self-destruct in whatever wild and inappropriate way you can!" She shook her head slightly. "What happened to you, Castle?" she asked softly.

What happened to him? Oh, he just had his heart trampled on when he found out she'd been lying to him for the better part of a year. That was all. He knew his actions of late were different from the Rick Castle of the last few years, but he'd decided he needed that different lifestyle to help him forget his feelings for Kate Beckett and the relationship that he'd always assumed they could build from those feelings.

He tried to shrug casually, adopting the devil-may-care attitude that had gotten him through the last several weeks at the precinct. "Nothing much. I just realized how much I've been missing lately, caught up in the day-to-day grind, you know? Needed a change. Thought it was time I really needed to get back into things, started living life again."

"So you decide to start doing wild partying with people you don't know, and following a cop who's only interested in how bad-ass he can be and doesn't give a damn if you get killed in the crossfire? I heard about that bust, Castle. I know how close you came to not making it out. Slaughter had no business putting you in that situation."

"It was fine," he told her, somewhat laughing it off. "And Slaughter didn't put me in it. I went along with him."

"He didn't back you up like he should have."

"I was fine," he repeated.

"This time." She shook her head again. "God, Castle, what about Alexis? What about your mother? Did you tell _them_ what happened with Slaughter? And what do they think of your new way of 'living life' again? Oh, wait." She snapped her fingers. "I think we do know what Alexis thinks. She helped lock you in a room because she wants her old father back. And I think we can safely say that Martha doesn't think too fondly of your new lifestyle either, because she _helped_ Alexis. What kind of example are you setting for your daughter, Castle? And Lanie, and the guys? What about them? They were wondering what they did wrong to make you desert them for Slaughter."

"And what about you, Kate? You mentioned everyone else, but what about you?"

"What about me? I'm not the one acting like a rich jackass who only cares about himself. But me? I'd like my partner back. The one who would stay late with me to work on a case, or would go out for drinks to celebrate putting a murderer behind bars." She paused a moment, and then continued softly, "I want my friend back, the one who always knew the right thing to say when I was feeling down or frustrated. He was there, and then poof...he wasn't. And the person that looked like him was flying to Vegas and was speed dating from the blonde section of the singles page and was getting himself almost killed by shadowing a psycho cop who only looks out for himself. So no, I have no clue where he went or how to get him back. Do you know where I can find him?"

He stared at her, his expression unreadable. She was taking deep breaths. He knew she wondered about the change in him. But he wasn't prepared for that first comment-saying he couldn't stand her-to pop out of her mouth, nor was he prepared for the look on her face when he questioned her about what she'd said. She looked hurt. And it surprised him. These last few weeks, he was just trying to help himself, to ease his own grief over crushed dreams.

He never expected her to be hurt by the new Rick Castle.

He never wanted her to be hurt.

Did he?

He was just trying to heal himself.

Wasn't he?

She still looked hurt, especially after the verbal barrage he was just treated to. But ultimately, it didn't really matter, did it? She didn't care about him, not like he cared about her. She just wanted...oh, hell. He didn't know _what_ she wanted, but he knew it wasn't what he wanted.

So finally, he just told her, "I'm fine, Kate. And don't worry...the Slaughter thing is only temporary, and I'll be sure to go out for drinks with you guys once in a while so you don't have an odd number at the bar. But right now," he said, acting jovial again, "I think I hear some of those chocolate chip cookies calling my name. Be back in a sec." And he got up and escaped to the closet, leaving her sitting on the floor, wondering just where her wonderful writer had gone, and if she'd ever be able to find him ever again.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Somehow, however awkward it was, they started talking again after that, even though it took them a while-an hour or more after their talk/argument-to get to that point. Their topics of conversation were about as generic as they could possibly be, a testament to how much neither of them wanted to delve into serious territory again. They found a deck of cards amongst a slew of board games that they found in the back of the closet, probably put there by a forward-thinking Alexis, and launched themselves into a game of 500 Rummy.

At one point, they did try to come up with meal options given the various choices of foods that were provided for them. Kate was warmed a bit when Castle started coming up with outlandish combinations of food, much like the outlandish ideas he came up with when they were building theory together. It was a glimpse of the old Castle, and after the last few weeks, she was really starting to treasure those rare glimpses.

During one of those joking sessions, the topic had turned to their state of imprisonment, and their team of captors. And Castle, seizing the opportunity because of his inherent curiosity, asked casually, "So you never did tell me what was in that text from Lanie."

And just like that, she froze again.

"Uh...I...told you, Castle...nothing much. Just about...us...being locked in here," she stammered.

"Really? I wanna see it. I showed you mine," he reasoned, getting up to grab her phone from the table.

She was fast too, though, and jumped up faster to intercept her phone before he could get to it. "No, Castle. There's...other...girl stuff in the message. Uh...personal. So really, you wouldn't be interested."

He decided to let it slide for that moment, but he was still _definitely_ interested, not to mention intrigued about how she could get all agitated and uncomfortable at the mere mention of a text message, girl stuff or not.

But finally, after more hands of rummy, they couldn't deny the big immediate question that was looming over them and would have to be faced.

After yawning, Kate finally broached it first when she said, "Castle, I'm tired and I...want to go to bed. To sleep. So how are we going to work this out when there's...only one...uh, bed?"

* * *

_**Did anyone catch the conversation? Did it seem familiar? It was supposed to be the mirror image of the argument in Knockdown, without being too obvious.**_

_**Sorry for the huge amount of angst in this chapter. Like I said...it's just an inherently angsty topic**_

_**I liked how this chapter came out, and I hope the rest of you did too. Sorry for this one being a bit late relative to the first 3 chapters. I hope the longer length makes up for the delay.**_

_**And remember, I'm on tumblr and twitter: xxGoogiexx and xxGoogiexx.**_

_**So...thoughts? As always, I really want to hear what you think.**_


	5. Flirty Truces

_**Big, tremendous thank yous to all who took the time to leave a review or contact me about the last chapter.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, and nor anything else recognizable.**_

* * *

Kate woke the next morning to the sunlight peeking through the curtains. As she slowly regained consciousness, she took note of the strange bed, and the strange room. She briefly wondered where she was, until she let her mind go back as she remembered the strange events of the previous day.

Strange, indeed.

The first thought that came to her mind was the image that she found upon entering this room, the image of Castle, duct tape covering his mouth, handcuffed to the bed. She smiled, remembering how utterly ridiculous he looked, especially after he revealed that Alexis had put him in that predicament. She was happily remembering the sight, when all of a sudden it occurred to her that the bed that Castle was sitting on then was the bed that she was currently waking up in now.

And then she froze when she became aware of the hand resting warmly on her hip.

And it wasn't her own hand.

Which meant that it had to belong to the only other occupant of this room.

She turned her head slowly, trying to sneak a look at how it could be that his hand was on her hip. After much debating the night before about their sleeping arrangements, they came to a tentative truce and formulated an agreement to both share the bed, but with a pillow in between them and Beckett sleeping normally under the covers, but Castle sleeping on top of both of the sheets. It wasn't ideal, and it was way closer than she wanted to get with Castle while they were still so much at odds with each other, but it was about the best solution either could come up with so one of them didn't have to sleep on the floor or they didn't have to sleep in alternating shifts.

Once they got that taken care of, Kate found her next obstacle when she retrieved her bag from the closet and took it into the bathroom to change into her pajamas. At least she was expecting pajamas to be in her bag, before she looked through the contents of what Lanie had packed for her. And then she decided that if she didn't want to murder Lanie for locking her into the room with Castle, she would surely have enough justifiable cause to murder her for her choice of night clothes for Kate.

The first garment was a beautiful red nightgown, the top of which was form-hugging, transparent lace which left little to the imagination, and the bottom was waves of chiffon that hung in irregular lengths all the way down past her knees. Lanie must have really searched for this, because she'd had it far back in her closet, having bought it years ago in anticipation of a romantic night with an old potential boyfriend, a night that had never materialized. And the second garment-a simple satin, spaghetti-strap nightie in a rich, deep emerald green color-she had never seen before. When she unfolded the short gown, she found the little note that Lanie had written to her: _'Consider this your captivity present. I think you can figure out what you need to do with this. You can thank me later.'_

She didn't want to leave the room wearing either one of those. But in the end, she had no choice but to wear Lanie's nightgown, because there was no way in hell she was going to wear that red one around Castle. The red one screamed, 'Do me right now!,' whereas Lanie's only whispered 'You want me, don't you?' So the green gown got the nod.

She did, however, wrap two towels around herself when she exited the bathroom, not wanting Castle to see even a little bit of what she was wearing. She received a look from him the definitely told her that he thought she was nuts, but she ignored it and made him turn around while she slid under the covers, pulling the blankets up to her neck. She felt like a complete prude, but after her comment about him not being able to stand her, she didn't want it to seem like she was trying to come onto him just to make him notice her again.

It was hard to fall asleep, but she did eventually, still fully covered by the blankets and laying stiffly on her side of the pillow-divided bed. So when she registered the hand on her hip after she woke up, she wondered how that had come to be. She didn't scoot closer to him in the night, did she? As she turned her head, she noticed with relief that she didn't do any scooting; they were each still on their respective sides of the bed, but Castle's side was used more liberally, as he'd rolled over, half onto the divider pillow, and then had stretched his hand across the rest of it to find her hip.

He was really cute when he slept.

She smiled at the errant thought that had popped into her head as she looked at him, and it was that sight that he saw as he opened his eyes to greet the morning. He blinked once, then twice, obviously trying to reconcile the image that he was seeing, of waking up to Kate Beckett's smiling face as she lay a very short distance away in what appeared to be the same bed. He continued to stare silently at her, and her smile slowly went back to a more neutral expression the longer he looked at her.

"Please tell me there's no tiger," he said finally, referring to the last time they'd woken up together and had found the tiger shortly thereafter.

She rolled her eyes, but then she told him, "No tiger, but you might wish there was if you don't get your hand off my hip within the next three seconds, Castle."

"Huh?"

"Your side of the bed and my side of the bed? The pillow that you're laying on was supposed to be a divider, not your own personal body pillow. Now, your hand, Castle?"

Suddenly aware of her meaning, he lifted his hand off her hip and looked at it questioningly before tucking it closer to his own body. "Huh." Then he raised his head up and looked around. "I guess it's morning."

"Astute observation, Sherlock, what with the whole 'just woke up' thing and the morning sunlight streaming through the window."

"Boy, you're kinda snippy when you just wake up, aren't you? Glad they left us a coffee maker." He paused to give an early morning yawn, and after he did, he caught sight of what she was wearing and did a comical double take. "Whoa," he said before he could recover. He never expected to wake up this morning and find her looking like _that_...wearing _that_. But then he remembered their situation and schooled his face into a bland expression although he couldn't resist commenting on her attire. "Nice outfit, but the way. The color looks good on you." And he raised one eyebrow at her very roguishly.

It caused her to look down at herself, and she was shocked the find that the sheets and blankets that she'd covered herself with the night before had slid way down, so she was basically uncovered down to her waist, save for the green nightgown. But that didn't cover all that much, considering how it had shifted in the night. The fabric rode low over her breasts, covering them, but just barely. The outlines of her nipples were visible through the slinky fabric, and she knew that within seconds, they would harden to form stiff peaks, purely from the fact that she knew he saw her in the slinky nightgown, and was still looking at her.

She reached down and hastily grabbed the blanket, pulling it over herself in a flash before she could feel even more exposed. His gaze met hers again and saw the lazy grin start to form. "Don't see why you went to such great lengths to cover it up last night, Beckett. It's a perfectly respectable nightgown. It's not like it's sheer lace or something," he reasoned, but still with that lazy grin that told her that he didn't believe a word of what he was saying about that nightgown being 'respectable'.

Just the mention of the sheer lace made her think of the red gown. Oh, she was going to bury that red gown deep in her bag. There was _no way_ Castle was going to lay eyes on that thing!

"Oh, shut up, Castle," she told him, for lack of anything better to say. "Lanie didn't give me much of a choice for sleepwear. So just...don't look, okay?" As she held the blanket up to her, she looked around for the towels that she'd used the night before. But he continued to stare, and she finally had to tell him point blank to stop. He had the decency to look away for a moment, and she used that time to escape into the bathroom. Luckily, she left her bag in there the night before, so she thought it would be as good a time as any to take a shower. And afterward, she really needed to get more clothing on her body. Lots more clothing.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Smile!"

"Wha-?" Kate said as she whipped around from where she stood at the small microwave, waiting for it to pop a bag of microwave popcorn for an afternoon snack. After escaping for her shower that morning, she hadn't mentioned her nighttime attire, nor did he. After they made the bed-which was uncomfortable just for the fact that it felt way too domestic and intimate-they adopted another easy truce as they spent the morning playing more card games and some of the other board games that forward-thinking captors had left for them in the closet. Rick even had Kate laughing as he described the tricks of carnival fortune tellers, remembering the stories that his mother had told Alexis when she was studying it for one of her classes.

By what seemed to be a mutual unspoken agreement, just like the night before, they didn't talk about anything intensely personal, nor did they talk about their situation or the argument the previous evening. As a result, they seemed to slip almost back into their own type of previous interactions, with good-natured bantering and ribbing. If anyone else had been observing them, they would have labeled it flirting, but those two had never seen it, and so they didn't notice it then, either. To Kate, it was just a glimpse of the Castle she hadn't seen for weeks, the one she missed. The one that she...yeah. And though she was really glad to have him back, she wondered how long _her_ Castle was going to be here. Was he moving back, or was he just visiting?

Still, standing there in front of the microwave, she was lost in thought and was suprised by the overly cheery word coming out of Castle's mouth. And as she turned around to face him, with a sharp, teasing retort about ordering her to do things on her lips, she faced him, she heard the click of his phone's camera as he took a picture of her. "Castle! Why did you take a picture of me? And couldn't you give me some warning?"

"Because I needed one, and I did give you warning," he countered.

"A half second is not appropriate warning, Castle."

"Sure it is. It's good enough for the NYPD."

She looked at him strangely. "What _are_ you talking about?"

"A half second. When Slaughter busted into that guy's...what?" He saw the look on her face as soon as he mentioned Slaughter's name. And it was not a pleasant look.

"Are you seriously going to quote something that Detective Slaughter did as if it was the official NYPD rule book?" It almost sounded like ice had frozen her words.

He took a good look at the fire in her eyes when she was talking about Slaughter and he realized that there might just be a tiger in with him after all-her. And once again, he realized he was poking at stick at that tiger by mentioning Slaughter. He'd come to accept the fact he could be stuck in here with her for days, so while he didn't really care what she thought-or so he told himself-he'd come to the conclusion that it would make the most sense for him to not taunt her with things that he knew upset her.

"Okay, fine. Let me take another picture of you if you don't like that one," he told her, diverting the subject away from his new police inspiration, trying to remain jovial.

"Why do you need a picture of me?"

"Because I have an app for my phone that lets me do stuff to faces. You know, put on a mustache or bushy eyebrows? I used my own face for a while, but I'm bored. You're the only other face around." He shrugged. "So I need you."

"You're going to make me look funny on your phone," she stated.

"Yes, yes I am," he said, nodding.

"Fine. But only if I get to play with your face later."

He did a double-take. "Why, Detective Beckett! Enlighten me!" he joked. "Exactly _how_ would you like to play with my face? And spare no detail! This could get interesting," he told her with a smirk.

Her eyes got big, and for one brief flash of a second, she thought how nice it would be to surprise him by kissing the smirk right off of his face. That would certainly be one way of playing with his face. But she couldn't do that.

Could she?

Suddenly, all of her discussions with Lanie about confronting her feelings for him popped into her mind again. With those memories, or perhaps with the frustration of the last several weeks, came some sudden bravery.

She took a step closer to him in the small closet, and reached up to slowly trail one finger from his temple, over his cheek and down his jawline to his chin, where she let it linger for a moment before she removed it. And during her finger's journey over his face, she told him, "Oh, Castle, I don't think you _really_ want me to tell you, do you? I think it would be better to _show_ you. When the time comes." And with that, she stepped around him to saunter out of the closet, leaving a decidedly shocked Richard Castle standing stock still in her wake.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She stood in the bathroom five minutes later, still leaning on the vanity, staring at her flushed face in the mirror. 'My God,' she thought, 'what posessed me to just do that?' Castle couldn't seem to stand to be around her, he kept bringing up Slaughter like he was the second coming of NYPD badass gods, and then she had to go and flirt with him. What was wrong with her? Why would she flirt with a man who very obviously didn't want her anymore?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

And in the closet, Rick was still standing there, wondering what the hell had just happened. He and Beckett had flirted before, sure, but she'd never flirted like _that_ before! And damn, he wanted to call her bluff on what she'd said. He could still feel where her finger had touched his face. It was a delicious feeling, both burning hot and tender at the same time. And '_When the time comes'_? What the hell did that mean?

He wondered again at his mother's sanity level. How in the world was he supposed to get over Beckett, when he's locked in here with her and she touches his face like _that_?

And damn, he thought. He never did end up getting another picture of her for his photo app.

* * *

_**Still seeing lots of alerts, and that's great that people want to get updates. But really, send me a note and tell me what you like about the story. If you're shy about reviewing publicly, send me a PM. I'm not grading on eloquence. I just want to hear what my readers think.**_

_**A few people have mentioned the fact that I haven't mentioned Beckett's drink with the Limey, but I mention Castle's dates. In a nutshell, that's b/c nobody really knows about Beckett's drink. A lot of this story is misconceptions about the other person's actions or motives or feelings, from that other person's viewpoint. So since he doesn't know about it, it can't really come into the story, KWIM? Her drink didn't have any affect on him (or anyone else, for that matter, b/c he didn't know about it), whereas his dates and following Slaughter obviously had an effect on her and the boys, and also Alexis (in my story). Hope that makes sense.**_

_**So, like I said before, let me know what you think about this, and if you're having as much fun reading it as I'm having writing it.**_

_**xxGoogiexx on Twitter and xxGoogiexx dot tumbler dot com.**_


	6. Insomnia

_**I won't say much, except for thanks for all of the reviews and PMs that were sent to me. It's wonderful and gratifying to know how much people love this story, and I really love hearing from so many new readers, and a lot people that I've never heard from before. Thank you!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle, although it would be really fun if I did.**_

* * *

He didn't know what to think.

Truly.

He'd been sitting there in the chair across from the bed for who knows how long, staring at her. Of course, for him, staring at her was not a new thing by any means. But this was different because she was asleep. Before, she'd always been awake...driving, interrogating, reading, typing, studying, formulating, arguing, theorizing, shooting (hot), smiling (sweet), scolding (annoying, because it was often directed at him). But now, she was asleep.

Seemingly without pretense.

God, how he wished she was like that when she was awake. No pretense. Truth.

He thought he knew the truth for a long time. He couldn't say anything about it, because she'd said that she wasn't there yet. She wasn't ready. But he'd read between the lines; back then, he thought there was a chance for them, if only he was patient and waited long enough. Back then, he thought she was saying something else that he'd recently found out that she really hadn't been saying at all. Or, at least what he thought wasn't what...oh, Lord. He was confusing himself. And it was the middle of the night. But how did you reconcile it in your mind when something as important to you as your very soul, something that you assumed wasn't what you thought, was maybe...not? How did you react when you found out that what you believed wasn't what you assumed, and there might actually be a slim chance that what you thought you assumed might really be the case after all?

He was lucky he wasn't telling this to a therapist, or the guy would have charged him double by now just for confusing the heck out of him. Because Rick was living it, and he almost didn't believe it.

Because now, after this, he didn't want to be wrong.

He knew he had no choice.

He knew he had to find out the truth. He thought he knew the truth, but now...now he had that doubt. And then Kate's words from that very first case that they'd ever worked together materialized in his head: "And we don't want them to have doubts, do we?"

No, no doubts.

He knew Harrison Tisdale hadn't cared about doubts then. But Rick did now. He needed to know.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He poked the tiger.

She was sleeping, but too bad. He had to know.

He got up from the chair and tentatively approached the bed. The light in the closet was on, and from the residual light, he could see that she was sleeping peacefully, a bit on her side, facing away from the divider pillow in the middle of the bed. She had the green nightgown on again; he could only see that because of the small bit of the spaghetti straps that were visible above the sheet. He certainly didn't know it from any other way, because she'd availed herself of the use of the towels when she exited the bathroom again tonight. But he supposed she wouldn't want to parade around in _that_ in front of him...but damn, he thought, looking at what he held in his hand. There went that assumption too. He really needed to wake her up.

They had to talk.

Now.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She was sleeping, but someone didn't want her to. She felt somethng pushing against her arm, jiggling it, tugging on it. "Kate," the someone said. "Wake up."

She tried to roll over, away from the voice and the person trying to wake her up, but a hand on her arm stopped her. "No, Kate, you need to wake up."

Wake up? No, she wanted to sleep. But the person was insistent.

And then, as the person wouldn't give up, it occurred to her that she knew that voice. And _that_thought was what caused her eyes to fly open and search around the room.

"Kate," he was saying, "I smell smoke! Come on! Get up!"

Smoke? And with that thought, she fully came awake and remembered their last few days, getting trapped in this room by the busybodies that were their friends and family. But smoke? Smoke equated to fire, and they were trapped!

She hopped out of bed, looking around frantically, expecting to see the smoke that Castle was smelling. "Where?" she asked breathlessly, nervously.

"Psych." The word, normally said with a smile, was said blandly, seriously.

"What?" she asked, not understanding. And then she took a whiff of the air-air that only held the faint scent of the coffee that Castle had made the evening before. No smoke. "Castle?" she prompted, shaking her head.

"No smoke, no fire. Sorry. I had to get you to wake up, and that seemed the easiest way to do it. We have to talk."

"You...woke me up by threatening a fake fire? When we're trapped in a room with no way to get out?" Her voice was rising with every word. "Oh, well yeah, Castle, you can bet I'm awake! Do you know how hard my heart is beating right now? Are you _nuts_?" she asked, breathing heavily, the adrenalin from the last minute now wreaking havoc with her blood pressure. "God, Rick!" She reached out to whack him on the arm, but was further shocked when he reached up, lightning fast, and trapped her wrist with his hand.

Her eyes narrowed as she caught the look in his eyes after her swat was stopped. She rarely saw that look, and she hadn't seen it in a long time. But she didn't have time to think about the last time she did see it, because she next registered him taking a step closer to her. His eyes never left her face as he slowly put her arm back down by her side. Looking at him, at the look in his eyes, feeling how close he was standing, she was starting to get nervous. When he released her wrist, he brought his now-free hand up to wind it through the hair at the back of her head, and he lowered his lips to touch them to hers.

'What the hell?' was her first thought. Castle was kissing her? He couldn't stand her. So why was he kissing her?

She pulled away and looked at him. "Castle...what...?" she managed, confused.

"No, don't," he interrupted, and she was aware of the pressure of his hand on the back of her head as it grew more forceful, once again drawing their faces together until their lips met.

Unconsciously, she opened her lips to him, and she felt the lightest little nip of his teeth on her bottom lip before he slanted his mouth a little differently to deepen the kiss. Her arm, the one he released, involuntarily went around his back and the other one trailed up his t-shirt-covered chest to wind over his shoulder and finger the short hair at the nape of his neck. Her lips had figured out what to do, and she was now giving as much as he was, nipping and tasting, lost in the sensations of kissing this man. The little jolt she felt when his tongue touched hers was electric and dizzying. She couldn't stop the little moan that erupted from deep within her, and she felt something hard dig into the back of her hip as he tried to pull her even closer.

Just mere hours ago, she'd had that fleeting thought of kissing the smirk off of his face. And now she was doing it, although he hadn't been smirking. But she was certainly kissing him.

She was kissing Castle.

And there was no ruse to play through, no life-threatening situation, and nobody to interrupt them.

And she was kissing Castle. And man, was he kissing her!

He brought his hand forward to her her face again, splaying it across her jaw and her neck. She felt him caressing her cheek with his thumb, as he seemed to be slowing his kisses. Finally, after one quick nip on her lip, just like what he done at the beginning of the kiss, his lips broke apart from hers and he rested his head next to hers. She could feel the exhales of his heavy breaths in her hair, and she turned her face unconsciously toward his neck, reveling in the scent of him so close to her now, after he'd been so distant from her for so long.

She really didn't know what had just happened. Or more specifically, she knew _what_ had happened. She just didn't know _why_ it had happened.

Not that she was mad about it. She knew she wanted...more...wth him. But after his behavior the last several weeks, she was beginning to wonder if she'd ever have that chance again. But this...did this mean...that she might still have a chance with him after all?

She had to find out. Even though she knew that it meant she had to pull herself out of his embrace, because she needed to look at him, she needed to _see_ him.

He must have felt her start to pull back, because he did the same thing.

"Rick," she said, surprised at how breathless her voice sounded. "What...?"

The corners of his mouth twitched ever so slightly, and she felt his hand leave her hip as he stepped back, away from her. When he held that hand up to show her, she could see that the hard thing that she'd felt digging into her hip was her phone.

Why was he holding her phone? But she didn't need to ask, as he started telling her, "I had to see if it might be true after all. But...I knew I couldn't ask you. Not with words, anyway."

"Ask me what? Why?" She knew she should be following him, but after that kiss and given the fact that it was the middle of the night, she was just having a bit of a problem trying to figure out where he was going with this conversation.

She watched, at first amused, when he started tapping her phone. But then when she saw it unlock, when she saw that somehow he knew the password for her phone, her stomach dropped to the floor. Because she knew instinctively what he'd been looking at. And it wasn't her high score on Angry Birds.

_Lanie's text._

Oh, why hadn't she just deleted it?

"I couldn't sleep," he explained. "Probably too much coffee last night. So I saw your phone laying there, and...well...Beckett, you really have to get more imaginative with your passwords. The first four numbers of your badge? Really."

He shrugged, the casualness of the gesture belying how serious this moment really was. "You had me wondering, you know, when you wouldn't show me the text. I was curious. But I never expected..." he shook his head as he held up the now unlocked phone, showing the text message.

She sneaked a glance over at the phone, hoping against hope that there would be some way that it was different than she remembered. But as her eyes found it, her hopes were dashed. It was just as she remembered.

'_Girl, you know you're stuck in here now. So put on your big girl panties and tell him you love him, like you were going to do weeks ago. It's time.'_

She closed her eyes after she read it, but he kept talking.

"I needed the truth, finally. I figured if I kissed you, you wouldn't be able to lie to me anymore, not like that. After all this time, I think I deserved the truth, not more lies."

Her eyes opened and she looked at him. "Lies?" she questioned.

"Come on, Kate. I know you remember what I told you in the cemetery. I know you never forgot."

* * *

_**Aha! The truth comes out...all of it. Well, most of it. The biggies, for right now anyway.**_

_**Hope I surprised you a bit with that chapter. But really, when he gets poleaxed by seeing Lanie's text, how is he going to believe her words? So yeah, he just HAS to kiss her. That's just the only way, you know?**_

_**Hate it? Like it? Thoughts?**_


	7. Confessions

_**Before I start this chapter, I want to briefly address what a couple of people brought up: the fact that my Castle used the fire excuse, and then broke into my Beckett's phone, and that both things were really rotten and were a breach of trust. I get your feelings...I do. But if anyone else out there also has those thoughts, remember that this is my less-angsty fic about this whole time. It was supposed to be more fun and have some humor to it (like the whole premise about being locked in a room), and as such, Castle's discovery was supposed to be a random and accidental, yet very important discovery that he made when he was just goofing around. My Castle wouldn't have thought anything about unlocking her phone...big deal. He always invades her personal space, and personal life. It was just, shall we say, a little way to snoop, to pass some time, to find out more about her or just maybe annoy her a little bit, like when he walked into the ladies room in Season 2 when she was reading Heat Wave. No ulterior motives, just fun, like when she pickpocketed his phone. And then, well, he needed to wake her up, and once he decided to confront her, he needed her awake NOW, hence the fire fib. But I do respect your opinions, and I thank you for leaving them for me. I've attempted to at least address those points somewhat and may still in future chapters, but I'm not going to dwell on them either; that would change the tone of what I want to do with the story. **_

_**And for everyone else...wow, I'm loving how much you all seem to be loving this story. As long as you keep loving it, I'll keep writing it.**_

_**Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Castle. If I did, she would have given him a hug or a hand-hold or something at the end of 'Headhunters'. Or he would have with her. (I just don't want it all to wait until the finale.)**_

* * *

"You...know."

She stared at him with big eyes, scared eyes. It was almost too much for her to comprehend: the abrupt wake-up, the kiss, the text. And now...this. He knew her secret. He knew she didn't tell him the truth.

"Yeah. I know."

"I...Castle," she said, pleading with her eyes and her words for him to understand. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to hurt you."

He huffed out a sarcastic laugh. "Epic fail there, Kate."

"No..." Her instinct was to try to offer some comfort, because now-finally-the look in his eyes made sense. She lifted her hand like she was going to touch him, on his shoulder, his neck his face; but the uncertainty of _them_, despite that bone-melting kiss, stopped her, and her hand sIipped slowly down and settled for taking his hand lightly in her own. "I was trying to get to a place where I could...where I could be a better person, for you. I was so messed up and I was afraid that I would mess _this_ up. Us." She waited for him to say something, but she didn't, so she forged ahead. "I was going to tell you, right after the bombing case. That...affected me, Rick. I almost said something during the case, but then...we got interrupted. And then you were...different. You started pulling away, and I didn't know..." She trailed off, because he could see some wheels were turning in her head. "Rick, how did you find out that I remembered? How long have you known?"

He looked at her for a few long moments. "I always loved your mind," he said randomly, shaking his head. "The pickpocket. Bobby. I heard you tell him that you remembered. I was behind the glass." He let go of her hand and moved a few steps away.

The air whooshed out of her lungs like someone had punched her. "Oh." She sat heavily down on the edge of the bed. For him to hear it like that? "Oh, _God_, Rick," she said, the implications of her choices, her procrastination, her denial, and her bad timing raining down on her now.

"It was right after that," she said, incredulous, the pieces, the behavior all beginning to make sense now. She shook her head, her mouth hanging open a bit as she started off into space, remembering. "That was when you changed. When you started pulling away, like you couldn't stand to be around me anymore."

He shrugged. "I guess in a way, I couldn't. I felt like such a fool." He looked blankly at the other side of the room, lost in his own memories from weeks ago and still feeling that sting of embarrassment.

"Why?"

Her one word question snapped him back to the present and he looked at her, furrowing his eyebrows as he asked, "What?"

"Why did you feel like a fool? And God, why didn't you say something to me when you heard me?"

"Say something?" he asked incredulously. "Are you kidding? After I told you that last May, I...hoped...you know? And then that day, listening to you with Bobby, I was just metaphorically punched in the gut with the fact that you couldn't...that even after all of these months, you obviously didn't feel...anything...for me. Bringing it up to you would be like asking for the playground bully to punch me again."

Now it was her turn to stare at him, slack-jawed, after she caught onto one particular part of his explanation. "_I obviously didn't feel anything for you?_ What? Where the hell did you get that idea?"

"Come on, Kate! I told you I loved you, and you chose to ignore it. And whenever I asked, you lied about remembering."

She put her face in her hands, ashamed. "I know," came the muffled agreement through her hands. But through some inner store of strenght, or perhaps bolstered by the fact that he kissed her, she put her hands down in her lap again and she looked directly at him. "But it wasn't because I didn't feel anything for you." She looked to where he'd tossed the phone on the bed and picked it up. Standing up again, she walked over to him and held up the phone. "You saw the text, Castle. Now you know why I couldn't show it to you." She pointed her index finger at him menacingly. "Although we _will_ have a talk later about breaking into my phone."

"I didn't break in. I knew the password," he said, defending himself.

"Yeah, right. So that makes it okay? I suppose next you're going to be GPS tracking me like you did to Alexis."

"Really, Beckett," he told her as if the idea was preposterous. "You're not on my plan so of course I can't track you like I tracked Alexis."

She was ready to whack him again, but then she saw the smirk on his face. She decided not to go any further with that thought for the moment; there were other, more important topics to cover first. "Rick? Uh..." But then her words failed her. She wasn't expecting this. She hadn't planned this. She grasped at the first non-scary thing she could. "The text, Rick. What did the text tell you?"

His eyes bore into hers. "Like I...needed more proof." He wasn't going to say it. He wasn't going to assume anything, not after all of this. "If I was going to believe that text, then I needed proof. And I couldn't trust you to tell me with words. So..."

He kissed her. Oh, it stung a bit, that he couldn't trust her words enough to just ask her. But she knew she'd earned it. "So you kiss-ambushed me?"

"Well, I knew your response wouldn't lie to me."

She cocked her head to the side and pursed her lips, as if to say, 'I see your point.' After she chewed on her lip for a bit more, she tentatively raised her hand and set it lightly on his chest. "What did my response tell you?"

"That...you..." he started, but then stopped.

No.

It wasn't going to happen like this. He'd waited too long for her, and if this was going where he hoped it was, then now he had to hear her say it. Not from him saying it for her. Not from an implied text. Not from a kiss. Not anymore.

"Rick?" she asked, confusion on her face.

"You heard me last May, and I know you did. You lied about it. I thought you were embarrassed by me, by my feelings. But then I was just goofing around with your phone, and happened to find a text that really made me wonder about...about what I believed to be true."

He took a breath, and she wondered where he was going with this. But finally he spoke, and when he did, albeit somewhat shakily-which was strange for him-the strength of it hit her like a punch.

"Last May, I said I loved you. Heaven help me, Kate, but I still do. I couldn't turn it off, even though I tried. I couldn't push it away. But I need to know. You're not shot now, you can't run off and neither can I. What do you feel for me? Partner, or...more?"

_He still loved her_. Once her lungs could handle air exchange again after his proclamation, she took a deep breath. The hand on his chest curled up, gripping his t-shirt. "I feel...the same way I did when I was telling Lanie how much you'd changed. It hurt me, because...I...was... readytotellyouthatIloveyoutoo?" The words-the important ones, anyway-all came out in a rush. She grimaced inside when she heard how they sounded. Despite everything, it was still somewhat of a question, like she still needed the confirmation that it was the right thing to say.

His eyes narrowed, but then his lips quirked ever so slightly. "Not sure I caught all of that, Beckett. Can you repeat it again, this time with actual syllables?"

She pursed her own lips together, annoyed at him but still feeling just a bit giddy at his words. She furrowed her brows in a glare, but then when she saw the grin forming on his face, she went with the instinct that she had when he was teasing her about the phone app the night before. Her hand was already holding the front of his t-shirt, so she used the grip to pull him forward. She wrapped her other arm around his neck for more leverage so he couldn't get away and she pulled him in for her own kiss-ambush.

She felt his own grinning lips under hers, and she tried to kiss him, but they both found out that it's hard to really kiss someone when you're both starting to grin like idiots. After a few attempts, she pulled back just enough so that she could see his face. His eyes opened, and she stared into them, reveling in the fact that she was so close to him.

"I love you, too, Rick." She said the words confidently this time, feeling the doubts slip away. He loved her. He admitted it. And she could see from the flickers of his eyes that he was relieved...and happy...and yeah, just a little bit amazed to hear her say the words back to him. But they felt right. Finally, it felt right to say them, despite the circumstances. It was right, and it was time. But then that giddiness came back, and she couldn't resist asking him in a haughty tone, "Were those syllables acceptable to you?"

He gave her one of his cocky smiles, but she was right there with him, giving her own back. "I think," he started, trying to school his face into a thoughtful look, "that you might need some practice to make sure your words don't become victims of Systemic Syllabic Amalgamation in the future."

The cockiness was there, so she should have expected something akin to his response. "Systemic...Syllabic...Amalgamation? Seriously, Castle?" She moved to pull away from him in mock protest, but somehow, since she'd grabbed him and kissed him, his arms had come around her, and they now held her tightly against him and she couldn't go anywhere.

"Now, hold on there. I said, 'in the future.'" He leaned down and kissed her quickly, just because she was close, and she was there, and because he could. "I think _those_ syllables, right then, were perfect. Absolutely perfect."

The smile came back to her face slowly; she just couldn't help it. She released her hand from his t-shirt and wound it around his back. His arms came around her a little more tightly, and she leaned forward to bury her face into the hollow by his collarbone, just breathing in the scent of him.

As they stood there holding each other, he voiced the thought that had to be said. "We still have more to talk about, you know."

He felt her nod into his shoulder. He felt the heat of her breath from the muffled, "Yeah, I know," as she spoke into his shirt. Then she pulled her head back. "I know there are still...issues."

He nodded. "We do need to talk about everything."

"I know," she agreed. "But this is a good start, right?" she asked, looking for confirmation from him, even though it felt like a damn good start to her. Better than they ever had before.

He nodded again. "A little crazy, but yeah, it's a good start." Then he smiled. "I'm just really glad there's no tiger."

She got a gleam in her eye as she raised an eyebrow at him and gave him a sultry smile. "No tiger, but we _do_ have handcuffs."

* * *

_**Sorry I didn't get this out last night, but it would have been too rushed. **_

_**Thanks again for your support of this story. You're great! Remember, new story alerters, I really want to hear from you!**_

_**Good? Bad? Silly? Yuk? Blah? **_

_**Thoughts?**_


	8. Detail

_**I continue to be amazed by the response I get from this little story. And it's wonderful and so incredibly motivating. I considered not worrying about this chapter until tomorrow, but I decided to stay up late to finish it and proof it so you all can have it a little earlier. **_

_**I heard from someone on tumblr about a Castle discussion board where people were saying that someone should just lock them in a room together. LOL! See? Hope they're reading this!**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Castle. I don't rent anything either. I do, however, lock the fictitious characters in rooms and make them cook in closets.**_

* * *

His hand was on her hip again.

For the second day in a row, she was waking up with Rick Castle's hand on her hip.

But today, the difference was that his hand was on her opposite hip, and the warm weight of his arm was not stretched across the divider pillow today, but instead was laying possessively across her stomach. In fact, there was no divider pillow anymore. When they'd finally admitted exhaustion-it was, after all, the middle of the night-they'd climbed in their respective sides of the bed. With a grin and a flourish, Rick had taken the divider pillow, picked it up and launched it across the room toward the closet. She was looking at him with a bemused look on her face the whole time, and when the pillow was out of their way, he looked down at her laying in the bed.

His face got serious then, and she got a little worried. "What?" she questioned.

"I'm happy about all of this. Really. I waited a long time for...you...and us, and this is...kind of unbelievable, actually. But amazingly wonderful." He gave her a small, sincere smile, but for the most part, he was still serious when he said that, and despite his encouraging words, she was still a bit worried.

"But...? Come on, Castle, I can hear the 'but'."

"But it just hit me that despite all of those good feelings, there are things..." He paused and massaged his fingers into his forehead. "Part of me-the kid in me, I guess-is really happy. You love me, I love you, we can say it out loud and it's just really...cool. I mean...I got the girl! And she's hot!" He gave her a quick little grin. Kate was looking at him, prepared for the serious conversation, but when he said that, she just had to roll her eyes at him.

His face is voice got a bit lower then and he went back to being serious. She could see the cloud pass over his face. "But there's that other part of me, that more adult part that you say you don't see very often, and that guy is still pretty hurt. And he's still pretty mad." He looked down for a moment, and then back up into her eyes, which looked a little bit tense at his admission. "You lied to me for 10 months, Kate. That just doesn't go away with an 'I love you'. If anything, it makes you wonder what kind of an 'I love you' it really is."

The pain in his voice tore at her. She'd accused him in the past of being childish, but the quality of his voice right now was anything but. His was the voice of a man who was serious, who was conflicted. It was the voice of a man who had been hurt, _by her_, and was _still_ hurting. And even now, even as much as he wanted to get past it, he knew that hurt was still there.

"It's a sincere one," she answered him truthfully, "but I know it was too long in coming. And I'm sorry about that." He was sitting on 'his' side of the bed, and she rose up to crawl over and kneel in front of him. "I wish I could have been strong enough to tell you earlier." Testing her newly-found shows of intimacy with him, she reached up tentatively and lightly cupped his cheek and looked into his troubled eyes before leaning forward to touch her lips to his. "I'm sorry," she said again. "Look, can we lie down? I'd like to tell you a few things, but I'd like to get more comfortable."

Just like that, his mind went somewhere else and he raised an eyebrow at her. "Not _that_ comfortable, hot shot," she told him with a glare. "But it's late, and this could be a long talk."

He nodded, but then gave her a funny look right before he hopped off the bed. "Back in a minute. Don't go anywhere," he called to her as he headed toward the closet.

She rolled her eyes at not only his abrupt departure, but also at his comment. "Castle, we're locked in here together. Exactly where would I go?" she asked him.

"Figure of speech," he said as he jogged back from the closet, holding something in his hand. He kneeled on the bed in front of her, and he unfolded what was obviously one of his t-shirts and quickly pulled it over her head.

"Castle!" she said as her head poked out of the neck hole. "What are you _doing?_"

"Preserving my sanity," he said under his breath. "Look, uh...Kate? Can I be honest?"

"Oh, please do."

"Your nightgown is hot. Well, I mean that you _in_ the nightgown is hot. _Really_ hot. Get my drift?" He made one of those comical Castle faces with the big eyes, and then added, "It was one thing with the pillow in between us and you trying to make a roman toga out of our towels, but now..."

"Ahhh, minimize the temptation?" she asked, trying to keep a straight face, but secretly pleased over his admission that he was...tempted.

"Bingo."

"So you like it, huh?"

"Do you really have to ask that? I've been trying to ignore it since I woke you up, but if we..." He glanced down at the bed and then back up at her, the implication clear.

"Got it," she said, almost laughing at his exaggerated discomfort. "But if you really like it, then be sure to thank Lanie. She bought it for me just for our little forced vacation here."

He thought about that for a few seconds. "She bought _that_ for you, while she was planning...hmmm." He made a face like he he'd just tasted something unpleasant. "Not sure if I'm grateful to her, or if I'm just a little creeped out thinking of her thinking of us...you know. With the nightgown."

"Or without it." She just couldn't resist.

"Not helping, Kate," he told her in a reprimanding tone as he pulled his half of the covers back so he could slide underneath them. She followed his lead and did the same, leaving the t-shirt on.

They silently crawled under the covers-all of the covers; no 'above the sheet' or 'below the sheet' anymore-and lay down on their sides, facing each other. They just gazed at each other for a while, and she could see a myriad of thoughts flit across his face, from the still-obvious disbelief that she was there, to the happiness that she was, to the inevitable cloud when he remembered all of the hell she had put him through. When she read that on his face, she grabbed his hand under the covers and gave it a squeeze. "I'm sorry," she repeated again. Then she took her fingers and gently touched his lips. "No, don't say anything. Let me try to tell you."

And so she began, finally telling him, after all of these months, the thoughts that were going through her head from the time she felt the impact of the bullet. She told him of how she heard every second of his confession, and how she latched onto his face and could only see him. She couldn't speak, but he was her lifeline against the intense pain and shock until the time when her injuries took her consciousness from her.

She told him about making the decision to lie to him, telling him that she didn't remember his confession; how with all of the physical trauma, she also had the mental trauma of her own shooting, her mother's case and Montgomery's betrayal to deal with too, she just didn't see, at the time, how she would have the physical or mental strength to try to forge a new relationship with him. Not to mention the fact that she technically already had a boyfriend at the time, even though that relationship was all but done anyway. And she was convinced that if she was honest with Rick then, that with all of her issues she would doom them before they ever got started. She admitted that it wasn't the best solution, but it was the best she could think of at the time.

He was silent for a lot of it, knowing that now, she just needed to get it out. And he would listen, because if there was something that would help him to better come to terms with her lie, then he wanted to hear that. He knew they had a start, now that the feelings were out in the open, but he didn't know what kind of a future they would have if he didn't trust her, or couldn't come to terms with her decisions.

She expressed tearful regret when she talked about the jealousy and hurt that she felt during the case with Serena Kaye; how she didn't want him to be with the Insurance Investigator and how it gnawed at her insides how taken he seemed to be with Serena. Still, Kate knew she had no claim on him and she couldn't keep him from trying to be happy when she wasn't prepared yet to be there for him, like that. And through the confessing of all of these feelings, Kate was just beginning to realize that now that the secrets were coming out between them, she could think about all of those personal moments and situations that they'd experienced together, and she could finally acknowledge all of those feelings that she couldn't express then. And the relief of that made the normally stoic Detective Beckett into somewhat of a teary mess.

She kept apologizing for the tears, and he kept wiping them for her, whether with the pad of his thumb or just by grabbing the edge of the sheet that covered them. He didn't say much, really; she was the one who couldn't stop talking. It was almost as if her 'I love you' to him was the dam that was holding back the flood of words and emotions. Once that 'I love you' was spoken, the dam was broken and everything just rushed out.

Dr. Burke would have been proud of her.

And at one point, Kate even admitted to Rick that she was still seeing Dr. Burke. His eyes showed his surprise, but he didn't say anything. His fingers just kept making light patterns on her forearm as she talked, silently giving her support and letting her know that he was listening.

The talking slowed eventually, when neither one of them could stay awake any longer. They drifted off to sleep like that, facing each other, but somehow must have shifted in the middle of the night so that she was on her back when she awoke, and his arm was stretched across her. The feeling felt foreign to her; she hadn't slept in the same bed as anyone in almost a year. But after the long night before, she knew instantly who it was. Her mind flew through a fast-forward show of him waking her up, kissing her, showing her that he'd read the text. And then, the hard-fought confessions that they'd both been so hesitant to share for fear of rejection or indifference.

But that text...it all started with that. The sneak. Leave it to Castle to figure out her password, she thought as she smiled. And really, if it hadn't been for that text being on her phone, she wouldn't have really cared if he'd looked at it. But in retrospect, she had to admit that she felt lighter somehow, now that everything was out in the open. No more oppressive secret weighting her down, making her wonder if she'd waited too long. She didn't have to worry about him speed-dating flight attendants or just generally pulling away from her. No, she thought, looking down at his arm draped across her midsection, she certainly did _not_ have to worry about him pulling away anymore.

She finally turned to look at him, and once again, she was struck by how cute he looked when he slept. She was a little surprised to see how close he was to her when she turned her head; he'd obviously moved over toward her again like he had the night before. But the difference was that now, she wasn't freaked out by it. Now, she knew more of where they stood.

But she knew she had to try to wake him up; judging from the way he was sleeping-almost on his stomach but with his head at some unnatural angle on the pillow-he was going to have a monster kink in his neck if he didn't change his position. She nudged him. "Rick, wake up." Nothing. So she turned on her side just a bit, facing him. She ran her fingers over his face. "Rick, come on, wake up."

After shaking him a bit, he finally groaned and murmured her name. Well, at least that was good, she thought, he said _her_ name in his sleepy state, rather than someone else's.

His eyes blinked open and he gave her a sleepy smile as he murmured a "Kate...morrrrnninnn," type of greeting. After that, thought, his eyes popped open more forcefully and he asked suddenly, "Is there a tiger?"

She whacked him lightly on his shoulder. "God, Castle! Are you going to ask about a tiger every time we wake up together?"

He propped himself up on one elbow and looked around, disoriented. "Oh, we're here. No tiger." Then he looked at her, and she could see the memories of the night before start to flood through his mind. And then, "_Every_ time we wake up together?" The implication was clear, and when the crooked grin followed after that, she thought he was going to kiss her again. But then, all of a sudden, he scrambled out of the bed, leaving her midsection feeling cold without his arm around it. "Rick, where are you going?"

"Morning breath, Beckett. I'm not going to contaminate our first good morning kiss with morning breath! That would be...just wrong." And then he bounded into the bathroom like a superhero on the quest to singlehandedly fight bad breath.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Their captors had left eggs for them. They had enough fixings for an omelette, except for an omelette pan, so they settled with just mixing all of the ingredients in with the eggs and cooking everything up on the griddle. "It really doesn't matter anyway," Castle reasoned. "You cut up an omelet into pieces anyway. This way, it's just already cut up from when we cook it."

Kate didn't need the reasoning; she was just hungry. They'd slept in after their late night talking, and it was now almost lunch time even though they were only just eating breakfast. "I don't get to cook a lot, you know. But I have to say that I don't think I'll ever take normal kitchen appliances for granted again after this," she told him as she stirred the eggs, taking care not to slosh the mixture over the low side of the griddle. She almost let out a yelp when he came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her, resting his chin on her shoulder. This whole...thing...with them was still new, and she wasn't used to spontaneous displays of affection yet. The good morning kiss-once he'd brushed his teeth-had been odd. Very nice, and it made her feel a little bit melty and gooey inside, but it was still odd, simply because she wasn't used to 'them' like 'that' yet.

But things were still odd, but in a different way, even after they ate and cleaned up all of the dishes. He seemed more pensive and contemplative. Finally he caught her eye as he was sitting propped up against the headboard of the bed. He motioned her to sit by him and when she was settled, he took a deep breath and looked right at her.

"Kate, you're not the only one who was keeping a secret."

* * *

_**There we go, folks. Hope you enjoyed it. And now, those of you who have been wondering about Castle's secret...well, now you know.**_

_**My keyboard has been giving me fits lately, so if there are any typos, I apologize, and I'm going to blame them on my keyboard. Bad keyboard!**_

_**I really like parts of this, and other parts...well, I'm not so sure of those. So leave me your comments or shoot me a PM and let me know what you think, okay?**_

_**xxGoogiexx on Twitter and Tumblr**_


	9. More Secrets

_**Many thanks to those who sent me their comments on the last chapter. They are all greatly appreciated! I'm sorry that I just can't respond to each one personally, but I do value your comments and please know that you made me smile.**_

_**This chapter is of a more serious nature (which you could probably guess, considering where the last chapter left off). For those of you who are reading this for the humorous moments, I'll apologize in advance. And I'll try to get back to that tone more in the future, but it just didn't work here.**_

_**Disclaimer: Still don't own these people. Darn.**_

* * *

She sat there on the bed by him, cross-legged, leaning forward with her forearms on her legs. She regarded him with a curious look on her face. A secret? "What are you talking about, Rick?" And then she had a thought. "Is this some kind of a weird joke? You're going to get me all worried and get me to guess something, and then you're going to do something crazy?"

He shook his head. "I wish it was." He didn't smile, and the casual look dropped off of her face when she realized he wasn't joking.

"You're serious." He nodded silently. And then, looking at the stern, stoic expression on his face, she knew she'd seen that expression before. It took her several seconds, but it came back to her, and when it did, her eyes got big as she clamped a hand over her mouth. She started shaking her head. Her hand dropped away as she said simply, "_No_."

She didn't know what he was going to say, but from the look in his eyes, from the look on his face, she knew it had to be about her mother. She was shaking her head and she got up off the bed, backing up several steps, as if she needed physical distance from whatever he was going to tell her.

He didn't know how, but he knew the moment she guessed something about what he was going to say. She'd been through so many different facial expressions since they were locked in this room, from the outrage, to the contempt when he talked about his date or Slaughter. Then came the shock when she knew he'd read her text, to the uncertainty of saying the important words back to him. He saw tears and regret when she told him about why she kept her secret for so long, and a cautious kind of happiness when he surprised her with little displays of affection, like when he put his arms around her when she was making breakfast. But now...

Now he saw fear. After the shock of knowing what he was going to say left her face, it was immediately replaced by fear. He knew that look, because he felt it himself. He had shielded her from some of it by not telling her, sure, but he knew it was always there within her, buried deep inside. But he felt that fear with her, differently than she did, for sure, but he still felt it, because it had now affected him too.

He could see it in her eyes as she backed away, seeming like she was almost scared of _him_. Fear over it coming up again. Fear over what new things he might tell her.

And the fear that that if they got into it again, the death toll might be even higher.

"Kate," he said softly, "come here."

She shook her head. "You know...more. I can see it. You know something else about her case. And you haven't told me." The tone of accusation in her words was unmistakable.

"Kate, come here," he ordered again. "I'll tell you, because I think it's time. But you have to let me tell you all of it, and listen to me." He took a deep breath, as much for air as for impact of his next words. "You have to promise to listen to me, like I listened to you when you told me everything."

"It's not the same, Castle!"

"The hell it's not!" He didn't raise his voice like she did, but it was still steely and forceful just the same. "You lied to me for ten months to get yourself to a place where you could handle us having a relationship. You held _my_ life in limbo during all of that, do you understand that? You had things to work out...I get it and I'm working on being okay with that. And yes, I had a secret too, not for as long, but I did have a secret. But if I hadn't kept that secret, you know what? _We wouldn't be here right now. _At the very least, you'd be dead. Maybe me too." He paused when he saw the flicker of surprise in her eyes, indicating that she didn't expect him to say that. "Okay? Now will you just be quiet and hear me out? Listen to what I have to say and stifle your anger for a little while? You stifled your feelings for me for ten months...you should be able to stifle your anger for an hour." It was somewhat of a low blow, but it was also one hundred percent true.

She just stared at him.

Finally, he said, "You get over here and listen, Kate, or I'm not talking."

"You have information on my mother's case and you're giving me an ultimatum?" she asked incredulously. "You'd keep it from me if I don't play by your rules?"

"Yes." The single word confirmed her assumptions.

Stubborn man.

But in the back of her mind, that one thing that he said kept replaying: 'At the very least, you'd be dead. Maybe me too.' She knew now, after being shot, that he wasn't being melodramatic. He was being realistic. And in the end, she needed to hear and she knew that was the only way. She gave him a pursed-lip glare as she walked back over to the bed and sat down again.

He nodded at her after she sat down, acknowledging her capitulation. He began haltingly, but being the storyteller that he was, he settled into a rhythm of the story, of the events, of Montgomery's package of proof that was sent to the shadowy Mr. Smith. But it wasn't all about them either; he told her just as much about what was going through his mind during everything that happened. He was good at telling a story, whether it be real or fictional, and with the way he told it to her, he had her feeling something of what he felt all of those months ago. And then he explained how he felt like he was working at cross purposes by keeping her away from the case to keep her alive, but knowing that keeping her away from the case also meant that _they_ couldn't have a chance at a relationship because she'd told him she needed to get closure first.

"It was a catch-22 for you," she finally said.

"Yeah," he acknowledged, nodding. "The worst kind, where neither choice was good, and I just had to pick the lesser of two evils. But do you see? There wasn't a contest. Keeping you alive won, hands down. Because if you were...dead, then the rest of it wouldn't matter." He paused for a moment. "Besides, I didn't know anything...I still don't, really. Nothing concrete, anyway. Nothing that would really help us." She caught his use of the plural pronoun-'us' instead of 'you'-and it had slipped out without a thought, telling her that he now considered this as as much his fight as hers now. "The only thing I really found out is that the conspiracy is bigger than we imagined, and the people are more powerful than we imagined. And you weren't as strong then as you are right now...there was no way I could tell you. You were still reeling from the trauma, from the PTSD, from just going back to work and facing everything again."

"I wasn't that bad," she argued weakly, even though part of her knew he was right.

"Yes, you were," he said resolutely. "You were okay for the trauma you went through, but compared to now? No contest. And I knew that if I gave you the information then, the only thing that would happen is that you'd run at them full throttle and alert them to the fact that you were looking again."

"And I'd be dead," she finished bluntly, knowing where he was going, knowing that he was right even though it hurt to admit it. She'd had to take a bullet to know they were serious

"Kate, you _were_ dead. I saw..." he had to stop and take a breath as the memory of her in the ambulance flashed into his mind. "I saw you _die_."

His voice was low, barely more than a whisper, and he said the words while looking directly into her eyes. But then he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, and when he opened them again, he looked off into a corner of the room. She could see him take a couple of deep breaths through his mouth, like he was fighting the emotion of the memories.

She was haunted by her shooting. She knew that. It had been hard to accept, but she'd been forced to acknowledge the trauma that coming so close to death had created in her psyche. It would always be there, just like the scar that was on her chest now. But now, looking at him, she could see that Castle had been affected by her shooting too. Profoundly, if him staring at the wall and trying to keep it together was any indication.

It made her feel...odd, she guessed, that she never considered it before. That she never thought of the effect of him seeing her be shot, opening up about his feelings for her, and then seeing her flatline in the ambulance. And now, watching him, she felt like a heel for not considering the big picture...no, he wasn't shot in the chest, but she could see that he'd undergone a different type of trauma. One that he couldn't even acknowledge, one that he had to keep to himself. And to keep her safe, he could only take the word of some elusive man telling an odd tale.

She wasn't close enough to touch him, so she got up on her knees and crawled over to him on the bed, kneeling in front of him where he sat. Hesitantly, she reached up and touched his jaw, turning it toward her so he was looking at her. She could see that his eyes were a little more shiny than normal, a little more red. After she let her fingers drift away from his jaw, he shook his head again. "A millimeter, Kate. I know the bullet nicked your heart. If it had been a millimeter or two more, they wouldn't have been able to save you." Now it was his turn to touch her face, just the lightest of touches, as if to reassure himself that she was still there. "But they did. And dammit, I wasn't going to give those bastards a reason to take another shot at you. I'd rather have you alive and hating me than dead.""

"Rick..."

Whatever she was going to say, he didn't let her finish. "Do you remember when we had that fight at your apartment last year? When you kicked me out? Do you know why I came over that night?"

"You wanted me to back off...to walk away, I think you said."

"But I never told you that I had a visit from your father earlier."

Her eyebrows furrowed. She didn't expect him to say that. "My father?"

Castle nodded. "He asked me how dangerous they were." He didn't have to tell her who 'they' were. "And then he asked me to talk to you, to convince you that...I think he said 'that her life is worth more than her mother's death'."

She closed her eyes and hung her head. All of that time she spent with her dad during her recovery, and he'd never said a thing. Sure, he'd tried to get her to talk about Castle, but he'd never told her that he'd gone to see him.

"I tried. I always wondered later if I should have tried harder that night. If I had just...maybe Montgomery, and you-"

She stopped his words by putting her finger over his mouth. "No. Nothing now would change what happened. And I...I wasn't in a position to listen to you then. I wasn't in a position to listen to anyone."

Leaving that thought alone because he couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't sound condescendng, he was silent for a moment. "There's more." He was in this far already, and he knew he had to get it all out.

She froze. "More? So you _do_ have something concrete?"

"No...no." He shook his head. "Nothing like that." He went on to tell her of how the elusive and shadowy Mr. Smith had surfaced again during the murder investigation earlier in the year, the one that had ties to the Mayor. "But still, we don't really know anything concrete. We still just know that these are some very powerful people."

"The Mayor." She shook her head in frustration, and then ran her fingers through her hair and splayed them on her scalp. "God, where does it end?"

"Hopefully not with you dead." His response was immediate and direct, and she looked up at him in some amount of surprise.

"Or you either." Now it was his turn to show some surprise. "Oh, come on, Castle. If you're around me, you know it could happen. You said it yourself earlier. If you had told me about all of this when you found out, we wouldn't be here right now because I'd be dead, and you probably would too. And that...that...you can't die, Castle. Not for this. Not for me."

He looked at her quizzically. "Tell me something. Why aren't you more...mad? Why aren't you yelling and screaming at me for keeping this from you?"

She thought about it for a few moments. "I am mad. But I'm trying to deal with it rationally because I can also kind of understand your reasons. And when we get out of here, I fully expect you to show me the file or whatever you have with this information, because knowing you, you have something."

"It's a murder board, and it's stored on the smartboard in my office. And you can see it on one condition."

"And that is?"

"That you do nothing with the information I show you. Kate, you know at some point, something is going to pop on this. It always does, eventually. The knife wounds on Coonan, Raglan calling you, Montgomery, even the tie to the Mayor's case. Things keep popping up. You know they will, and you just have to wait for them. These people...they're powerful, but they _do_ make mistakes. And _we_ will find them when the time comes."

"We?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yes, we. Partners, remember?"

"I can't put you in harm's way for this."

"And I can't let them succeed in killing you this time."

"Rick...you have a family."

"And you have a family too. They might not all technically be family in the strictest sense of the word, but they all love you and I know they don't want to lose you to this."

She asked the question, then, the one that was so similar to the one she'd asked in that argument that he'd brought up. "And what are you, Rick?" And she held her breath waiting to see what he said.

From the look on his face, he was feeling the deja vu of that question too. But looking her square in the eyes, he said softly, "I'm one of those people who loves you, Kate."

The question was so much the same as the question from last summer, but the answer was so much different. And better. And all that she wanted to know. And it was that answer that made her smile slightly before she nodded her head. "Okay."

"Okay what?"

"Okay, you show me your murder board, but I'll keep it under wraps. I won't do anything with the information."

"Why?"

She could have asked what he meant, but she knew. That answer was so different than what he'd come to expect from her. But she realized that she wasn't that person anymore. "I told you that I'm still seeing Dr. Burke." He nodded. "I told him a while ago that I don't want my mother's death to define me anymore. I've been working on that. And getting shot..." she trailed off for a second. "If I get killed for this, then I _would_ be defined by her death. And I want to live. I _choose_ to live. And I want to see what else can define me besides a horribly tragic event thirteen years ago."

Listening to her, he saw that she really _had_ been making progress. That statement showed it.

"Good girl," he told her proudly.

She rolled her eyes at his words, but she was secretly delighted with the small smile that had appeared on his face after he heard what she said. "But for the record, I'm still kind of mad at you for keeping this from me."

"And just to be clear," he told her in response, "I'm still kind of mad at you for not telling me you remembered your shooting."

She pursed her lips and regarded him thoughtfully. Then she stuck out her right hand in between them, palm up. "Truce?" she asked.

He started at her outstretched hand, but instead of taking it, he raised one eyebrow as he asked her, "Honesty? From now on?"

She gave a nod. "Honesty. Always. Except for around gift giving occasions, of course." And then she smiled a coy smile.

He almost did a double-take at what she said last. That was so _not_ a Beckett thing to say! It was something that he'd say though. And it made him smile back at her as he placed his hand in hers to shake on it.

"Truce."

* * *

_**I thought about going further with this chapter, but it just didn't flow. And it was already pretty long, relatively speaking.**_

_**I know I really glossed over the Mr. Smith thing, but that's not really the important part here anyway. (And parts of that whole thing are so confusing that I'm sure I probably would have gotten something wrong.)**_

_**I hope you liked the chapter. And if you like it enough to story alert it, please leave a review or PM me and tell me what you like, at least once. I'm still getting new story alerts, but for some reason, they still outnumber the total reviews/PMs I've received for the whole story. **_

_**And If you find any typos, please let me know those too. I do try to proofread, but I don't catch them all.**_


	10. Peace and Laughter

_**Be forewarned: this is a lot of fluff. So if you don't like fluff, don't read any further. And to go with the chapter, if you don't know who Popeye is, please google him before you read this chapter. Shutting up now... ;)**_

_**For sar9481 and CastleloverHolly, I hope you like this chapter. Shutting up now... ;)**_

**_Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters._**

* * *

Beckett stood in the closet, looking at the contents of their makeshift pantry, shaking her head. "I _want_ a stove," she said petulantly to herself before turning around and stalking out of the closet.

"How long do you think they're going to keep us in here?" she asked Castle in a demanding voice, stopping in front of the bed where he sat propped up against the pillows, looking intently at his phone. Hands on her hips, she stood there and glared at him until he looked up from his phone.

"Hmmm?" he asked absently, before he caught the look on her face. He sat up a little straighter as he asked, "What? What's wrong?"

"We're stuck in here, Rick. What's _not_ wrong about that?"

Silently, he put his phone down on the other side of the bed. He held out his hand, but she just looked at it as it was extended toward her. "Go on, take it," he said nonchalantly.

She was obviously leery, but she slowly extended her hand. He took her hand gently, and lightly tugged her toward him. But just as she turned and was going to sit on the edge of the bed, his arm quickly snagged her around the waist and gave a mighty pull that sent her sprawling across him. With a surprised yelp, her upper body landed on the pillows on the other side of him. "Castle, what the hell?"

He leaned over her with a roguish grin on his face, the Castle charm seemingly at full strength. He was so close to her that she could feel the breath of his words on her face as he spoke. "We're stuck in here. Yes. But if we weren't, would I be doing this?" And he leaned down the last inch or so until there was no empty air between their lips. The mini-jolt still went through them when their lips touched. Even though he surprised her again, she was now becoming sort of accustomed to being kiss-ambushed by him. And if the truth be told, she was actually starting to enjoy it maybe just a little bit.

But then his tongue touched hers and she felt his hand dip under her shirt and start to caress the skin by her hip.

Oh, hell. She liked it more than just a little bit.

Her right arm was trapped underneath him, but in trying to get it free, she realized that she could use that to her advantage because it allowed her to run her hand over his chest as she freed it. Her other hand stole around his neck to find the hair at the back of his head. And all the while she tried to get herself situated, he kept her mouth quite nicely occupied.

Until he pulled away. Her eyes fluttered open as she registered the loss of contact. "See?" he told her, before dropping another kiss onto her lips. "While unexpected, and," he kissed her jaw, "somewhat inconvenient," another kiss, ""I would say that _this_," he continued as he leaned down to show her that _this_ was a quick little nibble on the skin under her ear, "didn't turn out to be so bad after all." And then he, once more, settled his lips over hers, not letting her respond in any way but to kiss him back. Which she did.

But several minutes later, her stomach decided to respond when her mouth couldn't, with a loud growlish rumble. Rick pulled back and looked at her, shock quickly being replaced by amusement. "Did that noise just come out of _your_ stomach?" And then, before she could answer, her stomach answered for her with another loud rumble.

She had a surprised look on her face at the rumble, although it was also somewhat embarrassed. "Uh...yeah." She pressed at his chest in a signal to let her sit up. He backed up, but then when she propped herself up, she realized that her legs were still sprawled over his, meaning that she was basically sitting on his lap.

"While I prefer our previous position, this one isn't so bad either," he quipped. But expecting an eyeroll or a swat or some other Beckett move, he reverted right back to their previous topic. "Are you trying to tell me that you need some sort of food-based sustenance? That you can't live on love alone?"

She turned to look at him, and sitting like she was, he was impossibly close. And the cocky grin was firmly on his face, and it was pure Castle. But to hear the word 'love' just roll off his tongue like that, especially when it was in reference to them? That was gong to take some getting used to. The sitting on his lap wasn't normal, but she was getting used to being...closer to him, in more than one sense, in the last day. She liked the new closeness that they were cultivating, but it still did feel...odd. And it was even more odd because some things made her still jumpy and uncomfortable, like when he put his arms around her while she was cooking their eggs, but at other times...at other times, she really wanted to break out those handcuffs and just have her wicked way with him.

But one thing that was still normal between them was the back and forth banter, and of course the innuendo. So as she got used to the new parts of their relationship, she embraced the normalcy of teasing him just a bit, with a little bit of those other thoughts thrown in.. "Yes, I think I do need some food." She lightly touched his jaw with the tip of her index finger and trailed it down toward his chin as she continued speaking in a breathy, playful voice. "Because I'm afraid that if I don't eat, I'll be so...tired later." She leaned in and feathered a tiny kiss to the corner of his mouth. "I won't have any _energy. _To do _anything._"

Oh, he understood her implication. If the way the smile dropped off his face in the blink of an eye was any indication, then he got it.

He gave her a quick but scorching kiss, burying his fingers in her long hair to make sure she didn't go anywhere. But then before she could register it, her legs had been pushed off his lap and he was on his way to the closet. He heaved a heavy sigh before he said, "Food. Energy. Yeah. Let's find food."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She joined him in the closet after several minutes, finding him staring at their 'pantry', just as she had been doing before their little teasing interlude. Suddenly conscious of what her hands were doing, (and _could_ do now, in relation to him) but also conscious of the still sometimes odd feeling of being too familiar, she settled with tentatively placing her hand on his shoulder. But he quelled any self-consciousness she had when he turned to look at her, flashing her a smile and bringing her in front of him as he put an arm around her. "I'm trying to figure out something to make for dinner, but I'm not having much luck."

"I know. That was what I was frustrated about before, when you..." she trailed off.

"When I...?"

"When you pulled me onto the bed and kissed me," she all but spit out. "God, that sounds so...tawdry."

"Mmmm...maybe," he supposed. "But it was kinda fun," he grinned back at her as he waggled his eyebrows.

"Dinner, Castle?" she reminded him.

He quickly gave her a chaste kiss on the cheek, but then got down to the business of food.

"We have bread, but I don't want another sandwich. Eggs, but we just had eggs."

"Rick, it's your family who locked us in here. What do you guys like? Because those are they types of meals that they'd probably plan for us."

He shrugged. "My mother likes take-out..."

"Not helping, Castle," she told him, rolling her eyes.

"I don't know!" He thought for a moment. "Okay. If nothing else, there's plenty of food here. Maybe we just snack on things for a while."

"Why don't I look through everything and we can make a list or something, and then we can figure out if anything goes together to make a meal."

Eventually, through their collective brainpower and imaginations, they concocted a dinner for themselves, working together, laughing, cajoling, smirking and teasing. Kate had to laugh when he whipped up a pseudo salad dressing from some of their pantry contents, and in a remarkably good Popeye voice announced that they could have a spinach salad for part of their meal. But with all of her internal tension about how to proceed with the new, yet still strange closeness between them, she completely lost her composure when he continued with the Popeye voice and, striking a pose which apparently tried to show his muscles, broke into song with "I'm strong to the finich, 'cause I eats me spinach, I'm Popeye the Sailor Man!" lyrics. It was one of those things that, at that moment, just hit her as hilarious, and she collapsed in laughter on the chair.

He looked at her, wondering about this 'new' Kate. He'd never seen her laugh that hard or that much. She had tears in her eyes because she was laughing so hard. At him.

And he couldn't help but laugh with her, buoyed by the lightness of the laughter, of the moment. He stared at her, thinking of how lucky he was to be here with her, with nothing hidden anymore, feeling like they could now move forward and live life.

After several minutes, his laughing quieted into a smile, and he just stared at her. Finally, once she wiped her eyes, she looked up at him, still smiling. "God, Castle, do not _ever_ sing that song at the precinct or I _will_ shoot you...what?" She finished with the question right after she looked up and saw him staring at her silently, as he just stood there watching her.

"I love you," he told her suddenly.

She froze. Simply, but eloquently, he'd taken three normal words and had all but stopped her heart and lungs from working. She hadn't heard the words said just like that since he was kneeling in the spring grass above her last May. He'd said it recently, sure, but it had been part of a larger conversation, or sentence, or something else. This was just all on its own, with no prompting, with no segue from a conversation, and that made it all that much more profound. And sincere. And meaningful. And just...

"Kate? What's wrong?" he asked. He'd watched the smile drop from her face when he just let the words slip out, and now he was worried by the reaction that he saw.

She shook her head as she stood up to face him. "No, no. Nothing's wrong. It's just...the last time...I was shot. And..."

He knew what she was trying to say. It had to do with those words, that phrase that had just sneaked out of his mouth, but still was as truthful as truthful could be. It was a phrase that he could now say, without fear. "I've said it since then. Early this morning. Today," he reasoned.

"Not like that," she whispered back, before leaning into his lips for a quick kiss. "And I...love you too."

Her words were still quick, still rushed. But she said them, and she said them confidently and without prompting, and now with no secrets between them. And that was something. That was _everything_ to him. And after those words, it was his turn to freeze for just a split second before the grin returned and he uttered, "We'd better eat that spinach."

* * *

_**So now that they're togther, really together, should we just end it here? Part of me thinks so, and the other part of me thinks that there's still more to be told with this story, like getting them to...ahem...and/or actually unlocking the door and letting them out of the room. Aheming would probably be the next chapter, but unlocking would be one or two chapters after that. But at least I have achieved the main purpose of this story, which was to reveal the secrets and get them together. I'll let you guys decide.**_

_**Hope you liked it! If you liked it, you know what to do. :)**_


	11. Green eyed monster and Red

_**I don't know what to say. The response to the last chapter was incredible, and I'm so appreciative to all of you. Thank you. I'm sorry this was so late to be published, but I kind of went around a few times on this one, wondering if it was in character or not. I finally decided to keep it, because I think in the circumstances I've played out here, it's plausible. And I was somewhat surprised, but one reviewer (Krist0526) caught my **__**exact**__** thoughts on the subject before I could post it. But anyway, to make it up to you, and to thank you for your awesome response for the last chapter, this one is extra long. **_

_**Disclaimer: I own none of the Castle characters, nor anything else that is recognizable here.**_

* * *

In looking through their supplies, they happened on a bottle of wine, along with two glasses. Upon finding it behind a couple of boxes of crackers, he let out a low whistle and then his face broke into a big grin. "Look at what I found!" he told Kate, obviously excited like a kid in a candy store. "Now we can have a civilized dinner."

"A bottle of wine makes it more civilized?" Kate asked skeptically.

"Of course," he replied confidently.

"Whatever. I'm sure it will go wonderfully with our spinach salad and toasted cheese sandwiches," she suggested sarcastically, naming what they'd finally agreed to have for their meal.

"Of course it will, oh ye of little faith."

"So, who do you think was responsible for that?"

"The wine?" he asked with a look on his face that said 'duh'. "Beckett, are you slipping? Of course it's from my mother."

"Hey, it's not that obvious. It could be from any one of them. And with Lanie leaving me those two night-" She stopped abruptly, but belatedly, when she realized that while he knew about the origins of the green nightgown, he had no idea that there were actually two pieces of sleep attire, although sleep was definitely a euphemism for something else when the word was used to describe those two gowns. She turned back to the shelves of food and tried to appear like she had developed a sudden fascination with the boxed dry goods.

Of course, he was too quick and of course, her choice of words had him intrigued. A sly grin appeared on his face as he turned to her. "Night _what_, Kate?"

"Nothing," she said innocently.

"Oh, it's something, all right, or you wouldn't be trying to all of a sudden memorize the ingredient list on that box of Wheat Thins. So, Lanie left you two of something that begins with the word 'night'," he surmised out loud, tapping his chin and looking into th air. "Hmmm...could it be...a nightlight?"

"No."

"Night...crawlers?"

"Ew, I hope not."

"Night...mares?"

"Rick, that doesn't make sense."

"Well, then I can't think of what it might be." He paused, and she thought maybe he was going to take her lead and let it go. But then he snapped his fingers. "Unless it might...could it possibly be night..._gowns_?" She could just about hear the amusement in his voice. And then he leaned closer to her and said, "And I do believe that I only saw the _one_ nightgown that you said Lanie packed for you. And I think I'd really like to see both. So tell me, Beckett, where _is_ that second nightgown? In your overnight bag, perhaps?"

But then she turned to look him straight in the eye, abandoning her perusal of the Wheat Thins ingredient list.

"Touch my bag, Castle, and you are a dead man." And she strode out of the room, leaving him grinning in her wake.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Since her options for where to go were obviously very limited, she opted for the bathroom. After shutting the door, she glanced over to where her bag still sat in the bathroom. She'd just left it in a corner of the bathroom since she didn't want to be carrying clothes back and forth from the closet to the bathroom when she changed. And now she eyed the bag, thinking about Castle's comment. With a sigh, she went over to the bag and dug deep into the side and pulled out the red lace and chiffon gown that Lanie had packed for her. She held it up, thinking that her previous feeling about the gown was still dead-on: it _did_ scream "Do me right now!"

But now that feeling wasn't so off-the-mark from thoughts that had been flitting randomly through her head since earlier that day, when they'd finally fully opened up to each other. The thought of wearing that red gown didn't make her cringe like it did when she'd first seen it in her bag; now her feelings were quite the opposite. She knew they still had work to do in the communication department, but now they'd been honest about their feelings, and the secrets were out in the open. And she told herself that it was only natural that since they'd progressed to that point, her mind would start traveling even further, specifically into red lace nightgown, 'do me' territory. Willingly, and with some amount of anticipation.

And from the sounds of it, his mind was going there too, although he had no idea about the red lace part of it.

She wondered absently if he liked red. And then she thought he must, as she remembered the red shirt he'd worn a few times in the last few weeks; it was a new color for him. But then she frowned as something hit her...the first time she'd seen him wear it, it had been when he was speed-dating the flight attendant, Jacinda. Blonde bimbo numero uno.

And when she thought of her, she thought of that whole period of time, and the string of blondes and odd behavior. Now she knew the cause of it, but it still made her wonder. And it made her jealous. And thinking of where the two of them were now, it made her gut clench in some sort of nervous dread. She didn't want to think of past lovers or even get into that discussion with him. But the problem with Jacinda and the others was that they weren't in the past. They were so recent that they were practically current. And when she and Castle were locked in the room, one of the first things he said was that he had a date that night.

With a blonde. Just two nights ago.

She leaned heavily against the vanity and pressed her fingers to her eyes, trying to will away the images of him with the blonde-recent images-that involuntarily popped into her mind. And then there were the other thoughts, the other doubts that started to creep up. He said he loved her. And...she believed him. She did. But now, thinking about the blondes, and the dates, even knowing the reason that he'd behaved like that, she still felt...just a little bit ill. Because how could they, uh, use the red nightgown...when he may have using someone else's red nightgown just a few days ago?

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

She'd been in the bathroom for a while. He thought about starting to cook the sandwiches, but they didn't really take that long, and thought it would just be better if he waited for her. But after about fifteen minutes, he realized that he was getting pretty hungry too, and he couldn't fathom what she was doing for so long.

He went over and knocked on the door. "Kate? Are you okay? Come on, we need to eat. You know we need our...energy," he said with a grin to himself, referring to their previous, innuendo-ridden conversation.

But he wasn't prepared for what he saw when she opened the door and walked out. She met his eyes briefly as she said, "Hi...sorry," and then she stiffly walked across the room and sat down on the chair where she'd collapsed in laughter just a bit earlier. But her demeanor was anything but mirthful now. Instead, it just seemed like tension was rolling off of her.

He stared at her, all thoughts of dinner temporarily forgotten. "Kate?" he asked, only saying her name, but letting the unspoken question of "what's wrong?" come through loud and clear.

She looked up at him with big, serious eyes. And then she dove in. "We're...uh...closer now than we were. Probably more than we have been before, right?"

He walked over so he was closer to her, and perched on the edge of the bed across from her. "Yes, you could definitely say that."

"And we're being...honest, right? No secrets anymore?"

He nodded. "Of course. Except for gift giving occasions, like you said," he told her, hoping to lighten her mood a bit. But it didn't work. "What are you getting at?"

She wrung her hands together. "Okay. I'm just going to say it, or I'm going to try to. Because we're not...holding things back now." She looked at him for confirmation, and he just raised his eyebrows and nodded to her, as if to tell her to go on. "Ummm...When we were locked in here, you said you..." She swallowed, and then finished, "you had a date. That night. That would be _two nights ago_. And now...we're...uh...you and me..." she trailed off again, and she saw his eyes close and his head fall back slightly as he realized what she was saying. "Castle," she finished, "no matter what you might have just told me, I can't be anyone's rebound, or conquest, or one-of-many, best-you-can-do-at-the-moment girl."

He started shaking his head before she was done, seeing her turmoil, and hearing it with the somewhat direct words. "No...Kate. God, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that about having a date. I...didn't, okay? I was mad about being stuck in here with you when I thought you didn't want me or care about me, so I...I guess I tried to save face by saying that. I just thought I was going to be working on Alexis' project with her, and the next thing I knew..."

"Yeah, I remember." She felt a bit of the weight lift off of her chest at his admission, but she still needed more. "Really?" she asked. He nodded. "Well...okay." She took another breath. "That's good. But what about the other...how many women have there been in the last few weeks? Oh, no, wait. Don't answer that. I don't want to know." She pressed her fingers to her temples and shut her eyes as if to force away he thought.

"Okay."

She looked at him again. "But..." She rolled her eyes, nervous eyes, troubled eyes. "It's just...you've been dating all of these women, and if we..." she trailed off again.

When she didn't make any move to say anything else, he asked her, "Kate, what are you trying to say?"

"God, just that the thought of you screwing some blonde bimbo, or a few of them, and then turning around and telling me that you love me, and then we're talking...about...like I'm supposed to be waiting in the wings right after you roll out of bed with her... Well, it just makes me a little sick. And now that everything else is out in the open between us, I started to think about all of the 'dates' you've had and...I just...and...God, Castle, what about some diseases or something? And how can I sleep with you when you were _just_ with someone else?" She felt so silly saying all of that, but at the same time, it was always prudent to ask those questions when thinking about broaching a more intimate relationship with someone.

He was staring at her now, a somewhat pained look on his face. "You're worried because you think I slept with...someone...else...pretty recently, and now I'm locked in this room with you and we could..." He nodded at her in an exaggerated way, like she should fill in the blanks.

"Basically."

"And...you don't like that thought?" he prompted.

"Duh." She rolled her eyes, which were now a little shiny from the stress of the emotion of the moment. "How would you feel if you knew that I'd slept with someone and then tried to seduce you right afterwards? No, wait a minute...don't answer that." She held up a hand and shook her head. "I don't want to know."

Before she knew it, he was kneeling in front of her. "Kate." He took her hands. "If the situation were reversed, I'd probably be a jealous raving lunatic." He let that sink in for a few moments, and he knew his words had hit their mark and made an impact when he saw her eyes grow a little wider in surprise, and then he saw the slight flicker of happiness. "And I didn't sleep with her."

"Which one?" she asked tentatively, with a skeptical look on her face.

"Any of them. And there really was just the one anyway, and she's gone now. Somewhere...far away."

She looked at him for some sort of indication that he was being less than truthful. And she didn't find any. "You didn't sleep with her?" she asked, her soft words tinged with a sweet, hopeful quality. "But you...I thought..."

"I know. But I didn't. I just was still trying to reconcile myself to getting over you, I guess. And you're a pretty hard person to get over, you know, and I actually did a remarkably awful job of it. So I...I ran around a lot, and did a lot of things with her publicly, and yeah, I brought her by the station, but I guess I just didn't let myself get that far with her while I knew...that I still loved you." At that admission, she felt the tightness in her chest release just a bit. "So...I haven't been, uh, involved wth anyone in a...while, and I'm...uh...pretty clean on that other front too." Then he had a thought. "But not all clean, because when I think of whatever else you might have in that suitcase, I have to admit to having kind of a dirty mind."

She looked at him, looked at his grin, and she saw sincerity. And a little bit of lust mixed in with his cockiness. And all of it made her relax just a little bit more. "I'll just bet you do." And then she was able to give him a tentative smile of her own.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

And surprisingly, despite everything from earlier, the evening was pleasant, with the good wine. They were sitting on the floor, leaning against the bed, having a picnic much as they did before. Neither would have thought it possible, but even with all of that talking around the topic of sex, they'd been able to segue into more neutral topics of conversation, like what their captors were doing, or when they might be let out. Of course, it was possible that they were still indeed thinking about sex when talking about being released from the room, because if they weren't released, then they'd be forced to spend another night in the same bed. And with talk of I-love-yous and nightgowns and the lack of any recent romantic partners, the thought of spending another night in the same bed had taken on an entirely different meaning.

And even though the seemingly mundane conversation topics may have had less than pure thoughts attached to them in their own minds, anything that was outwardly spoken between the two of them was purely G-rated.

But with the overt electricity that was beginning to arc between them, it was apparent to both of them where they were headed, even though no direct words were uttered.

They kept on with the dance for a while, still talking about mundane, inconsequential things, although the innuendo, at which they'd always excelled, got a bit more blatant as the wine slightly lowered their inhibitions. They slowly consumed the bottle, all the while dancing around the topic that was all but hitting them in their faces.

They washed their plates in the very small bathroom sink, at first side by side, but then with him behind her, reaching his arms around her as he soaped and washed the utensils. She took advantage of his proximity to lean back against him just a bit, moving just enough to let him know that she was capable of playing that game too.

After a few teasing minutes of that, she ducked under his arm to saunter out of the bathroom, leaving him to finish what they were doing. But he found her in the closet after a few minutes, breaking into one of the chocolate bars that had been left for them. He followed her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I felt like dessert," she told him as she turned around and met the smoldering in his eyes. "I just love the way the chocolate...um, melts in my mouth." And she showed him then, breaking off a piece of the bar and placing it seductively on the tip of her tongue. She brought it slowly into her mouth until it disappeared, and then she emitted a hum of satisfaction as she tasted the sweetness of the chocolate.

As he listened to her, he really couldn't resist any longer, and he dipped his head and captured her mouth with his.

She tasted so sweet to him, and it wasn't because of the still-present taste of chocolate on her tongue. No, it was more than that. It was the feeling of finally tasting the forbidden fruit, of knowing that it was no longer forbidden.

While their lips feasted on each other, his hands grew bold, bolder than they ever had except in the wildest of his dreams, and they dipped underneath her shirt to caress the bare skin on her back. He could feel her startle, but then her hands, which had stolen around his neck at the beginning of the kiss, seemed to pull him closer. He didn't bother to stop to analyze if his impression was real or not, but he just kept on doing what he was doing, even going so far as to dip his hands under the waistband of her pants.

He felt her startled gasp when his hands hit her bare bottom, but he didn't let it deter him. But he didn't bank on a similar reaction from her though. Somehow-and he wasn't quite sure how-her hands were now down around his waist, and she returned the favor of grabbing his butt when they were kissing. He didn't expect it at all, and it caused him to pull away and gape at her in shock, all the while still feeling that she hand her hands down his pants, albeit in back, and she didn't show any signs of getting them out of there. He may feel more confident about kissing her now, or showing some other other light signs of affection, but this was still all new territory for them, and some things just caught him by surprise yet. "Kate-"

"What's wrong, Castle," she asked him coyly, "you can do it to me but I can't do that to you?"

"Uh...noooo...Well...no...that's not exactly right. I..." he paused again, not wanting to say too much. But all he could think about was her hands, in his pants. He was already getting aroused, and the thought of that was just one more nail in his coffin of being totally entranced by Kate Beckett and all she was doing to him. All she _could_ do to him. "Kate, that's..."

"Yeah, Castle, I know. I think I can...feel it, you know?"

Oh, God. He was not going to survive. If it felt like this with their clothes on, then how would it feel later, assuming they were headed where he thought they were headed, with their clothes off?

Lord, help him.

But then she was slipping away from him, heading back toward the main part of the bedroom, beckoning him to follow with the crook of her finger. And all he could do was follow blindly.

She picked up both of their still partially-full wine glasses and held his out to him. After he took it, she said, "I propose a toast." But then she didn't say anything else.

"And...? What's the toast?" he prompted.

"Let's drink to it first, and then I'll tell you."

"But how do we know what we're drinking to?"

"Faith, Castle. You have to have a little bit of faith."

"So we're drinking to faith? Faith in what?" He was getting confused.

"No, we're not drinking to faith! You have to have faith that you'll find out in good time what we're drinking to. Okay?"

"Will I find out in good time? Because...Beckett? After that, I don't know how much time, good or not, I'm really going to have left for blind faith."

"Oh, you'll find out," she said, and then smiled seductively. "Let's polish off the wine."

And they clinked their glasses together and made a toast to nothing in particular, which seemed really backwards to him, especially if toasts were for something in particular.

After they drained their glasses, she pressed him back toward the closet. "I want you to figure out what we're having for breakfast."

If she'd said that she wanted him to fly to the moon, he couldn't have been more surprised. The closet? And food? Really? "Breakfast?" was all he managed to get out.

"Yeah, you know. Food, tomorrow morning. Assuming we're still locked in here then." She looked at him and said the words like it was the most natural conclusion in the world. "So I'll be right back. I want to use the bathroom."

He headed toward the closet, still perplexed by the sudden change in plans. She still seemed...coy, he supposed, and he thought they were on the same page with...things. So why did she just order him to finish the wine and wait?

He absently looked at the slim contents of their makeshift pantry, and his mind registered the small box of pancake mix. Just add water. Well, they could certainly handle that, he thought to himself. And pancakes were-

"Castle?" he heard from the main part of the room. "I thought of what you can have for breakfast."

Heading out of the closet, he stopped short and, once again, gaped.

She stood there, outside of the bathroom door, wearing not her clothes from the day, but something entirely different.

And dangerous. For him.

And it didn't appear to be a nightlight, or even nightcrawlers. She was standing right outside the bathroom door, one hand on her hip, dressed in a red lacy nightgown. A form-fitting, almost transparent red number with a fluttery chiffon skirt that had his mouth watering and going dry at the same time.

He was surprised when he was able to somehow find his voice as he strode slowly over to where she was standing. "What...breakfast?" he asked, not entirely able to form a coherent thought after he saw what was now adorning her body. "Okay...uh...what...can I have?"

She looked at him with so much heat and lust in her gaze that he thought he just might melt into a puddle on the floor right then and there. He was just about to say something else-anything else-when she took one of her index fingers and, trailing it seductively down his face across his chest and to his waistband, answered him with the one word that he was sure would make him spontaneously combust.

"Me."

* * *

_**Goodness, that was long. I hope you enjoyed it, and that you didn't feel it was too much out of character. At first I did (Beckett's reaction), but then I really thought about it and I realized while she may not be freaked out about (for the most part) past lovers, she probably would be freaked out about 'recent' or even 'current' lovers, especially when their true feelings have just seen the light of day and she didn't know that status of Castle's recent 'dates'. **_

_**Again, immense thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter. I'm really, really enjoying writing this, and a lot of that is due to the wonderful feedback I get.**_

_**And if anyone has watched those sneak peeks for 'Undead Again', don't you just want to yell the title of this story at someone? I know I did. Really, I think everyone needs to just conspire against them on the real show too, and just **__**make**__** them talk to each other.**_

_**Now...thoughts?**_

_****__**ETA: Just created a new pic to go with this story for my tumblr postings. Only took me a couple of weeks, but I kind of like it. I'm xxGoogiexx if you want to check it out.**_


	12. Ahem

_**I'll just say this right now: I'm nervous about this one. Honestly, I was counting back, and I don't think I've written an M-rated scene in a little over a year, if we go waaaaaayyyy back to the time of "The Plan". And THAT was a long time ago. So I'm biting my nails and hoping that I didn't just totally ruin this story with this chapter. **_

_**Obviously, the chapter is named for the comment in my author's note a couple of chapters ago.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own Castle or have any real rights to the characters, obviously. But I did own a red nightie like the one in the story.**_

* * *

He thought something might be wrong with him. Seriously wrong. He hadn't felt like this in...he didn't know how long.

She stood there in front of him, in that red...thing...that awful, wonderful piece of torture made of red lace and chiffon. It covered not enough of her, but too much all at the same time. It dipped to a vee in front, and the lace that went down her body (oh, her body!) to form another vee starting at her hips was sheer enough in some places to let the skin peek through, but covered other...places...just right to give the illusion of nudity when there really wasn't any. And sometimes the illusion was much more powerful than the real thing. Or at least to Rick, it was powerful, mostly because on some unconscious level, the kid in him knew that he'd get to unwrap her, and divesting her of that red number would be like unwrapping the biggest and best birthday present, times one hundred.

He let his gaze travel down her body, starting from where her hair, loose and flowing, cascaded over her almost bare shoulders, just covering the thin, lacy straps of the gown. His mouth was somewhat slack in pure awe, as she stood there and watched him. Despite the uncertainty of that earlier time when she'd questioned his recent romantic interludes, she had none of that uncertainty now. As soon as she'd stepped into the bathroom to change, she'd felt nothing but confidence in what she was doing. Well, confidence and lust. And now, her eyes shone with a unique brand of female empowerment that was only found in situations such as this. She'd grown used to him watching her over the past years of him shadowing her, so much so that now she didn't shrink back from the intensity of his gaze. In fact, she welcomed it, and the corners of her lips curved in just a hint of a smile as she watched him look at her, knowing that he wanted her, and everything in their relationship had come down to these moments.

While some part of him wanted to unwrap her, the other part just wanted to stare, and memorize this moment. And that wasn't just because of the profoundness of the moment. It was because, quite simply, he had temporarily lost the ability to think coherent thoughts with any organ above his waist. He wanted to touch her, but he didn't want to touch her. When she'd trailed her finger over his chest, and downward... Well, thank God she'd taken her hand back and had stepped back a bit so he could just feast his eyes on her. But he still wondered what was wrong with him, because he felt like he'd felt the first time his hands had gotten inside of his girlfriend's bra a few decades ago. He felt eager.

But no, this was worse. Because he didn't just feel eager.

He felt a little nervous.

Now he had just a tiny inkling of how she must have felt, knowing that their potential relationship was important and not wanting to do something to mess it up. And now, this, a moment that he'd been waiting for forever...he didn't want to do the wrong thing. He didn't want to mess _this_ moment up, to go too fast, or too slow. Although looking at her as she stood there in that red thing, he didn't really know if slow would be an option.

"You like?" She finally said.

He nodded dumbly, but enthusiastically. But he still didn't make a move to come any closer.

"Rick?" she asked, and then she took the decision about movement out of his hands when she stepped toward him. "Do you...I thought you wanted me," she said as she slipped her hand under the bottom of his t-shirt and touched the skin of his stomach before she ran her hand lightly around the side of him to rest it, still under his shirt, on his side. She knew he did, but with him standing stock still for so long, she wanted a little bit of verbal confirmation.

At her touch, he sucked in a breath. "I do," he said in a low voice.

"Then show me," Kate said, raising his shirt up so she could place a kiss on his chest. Then, impossibly close, she looked up into his now-dark eyes and told him, "Love me." And then she raised his shirt the rest of the way so he had no choice but to help her take it off.

By the time the shirt landed somewhere on the floor behind him, their mouths were already fused together and her arms were already wound around his neck, her fingers tangled in his hair. She could feel his large hands as he rubbed them over the lace at her back and the chiffon on her bottom, molding his hands around the contours of her body. Oh, what a feeling it was, and his hands weren't really even on her skin yet.

Oh, whoops...yes they were. Oh. Oh!

Somehow he'd pulled the chiffon skirt up and it was now bunched under his forearms as his hands kneaded her bare backside. Sure, he'd done something like that in the closet before, but it hadn't felt like _this_. And what she felt in front of her as she pressed against him, she'd felt a little bit of that before, but _now_...

Their mouths remained connected, kissing, sucking, teasing. Sometimes fast and intense, sometimes just barely nips. And as his hands were occupied, she used one of her feet to sneak around the back of his leg, stroking his calf with her heel and then wrapping her leg around his to anchor them together even more. She heard a light growl come from him when she did that, and then she felt her other foot leave the floor as he pulled her even more aganst him and began to back toward the bed.

His lips left hers and trailed down her neck to suck at the hollow right above her collarbone. With her lips once again free, she let out a low moan of appreciation.

Rick's lips left her neck as he sat down on the edge of the bed and looked up at her. She stood before him and her face was framed by her loose hair as she looked down at him. He took one hand and tucked a strand behind her ear before letting his gaze move down her body, letting it come to rest on the scar on her chest. He'd never seen it before, and now he just gazed at it, unable to look away, thinking of how the life almost flowed out of her right in that very place. He leaned forward and touched his lips to the scar, just holding them there for a moment. She wrapped her arms around his head lightly, and then lowered her face to his hair.

When he looked up at her again after she raised her head, his eyes were serious, thoughtful.

"You died. I watched...and that was all I could do. And it was all from this..." he told her as he took his finger and touched her scar. He thought that for the amount of damage it did, it didn't have the right to be so damn small.

"You did something. You gave me something important to hang onto, even though I couldn't deal with it right away. That was important."

"But the feeling...when you flatlined. When you died..." He now leaned his forehead against her upper chest, above the bullet, and he could feel her heartbeat, strong but fast.

And as if sensing what he was feeling, Kate confirmed it and reminded him softly, "But I'm living now."

"You are," he agreed.

"So let's keep living, Rick."

He needed no more invitation. He stood up again and gathered her to him, but he didn't kiss her. Instead, he looked pointedly at the bed, and then at her again. "My side or your side?"

She pretended to think about it, knowing that he was only asking her the question for a little bit of levity. Right? Or was he still giving her an out, despite the fact that she was wearing next to nothing and had just let him feel her up? Regardless, she gave the only answer that seemed appropriate. "How about we just share the whole thing?"

She reached up to kiss his jaw, and when she did, he had a fleeting thought of wondering how such a simple thing could make him feel like his skin was scorched from her touch. Still feeling the scorch of that little kiss even after her lips were gone, he lost his short-lived capability for words and could only mumble, "Share...sure."

He turned away from her briefly to grab the blankets and pull them aside. When he turned back to her, they caught each others eyes, and then mutually found each other for another kiss. Their mouths may have been busy, but their hands weren't idle either as her hands moved over his torso, down to the waistband of his sweatpants. "Thank you for not wearing pants that needed a belt," she murmured against his ear after her mouth had trailed back there to nip at his earlobe. "I don't think I'd want to take the time to undo a belt right now."

He thought it was bad enough how she teased him by running her fingers just under the waistband of his boxers, back and forth. He had to fight back a groan. But then she grabbed just the waistband of his sweatpants, and somehow, right after that, those pants were off of him, down around his knees.

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to calm himself. Because he knew if he looked at her, Kate, right then, in that red thing, knowing that he, himself, was now just about naked...oh, it wouldn't be pretty.

"Rick?"

And then another thought occurred to him, a bad thought. And groaned as he sat down on the edge of the bed again and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. He knew she was probaby wondering what he was doing, so he dove right in. "Kate, I thought I was coming into this room to help Alexis...I didn't bring..." He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "I'm clean, but I don't have anything—"

The fingers on his lips cut him off, and it was then that he finally looked at her. "No worries on that front. I've got it covered."

"Really?" The restrained exuberance was back, as if he'd just been told that he won free ice cream for a year.

She gave him what was supposed to be an exasperated glare, but she couldn't keep the smile from her face. She just couldn't. "Really." She shook her head. "Now can we _please_ get going with trying to share that bed?" she asked with mock censure.

The grin that he gave her then was a three-way cross between happy and lustful and predatory. "Impatient. I like it." And he swooped in and caught her lips again. "So, as much as I like this little number," he said, fingering the lace of the red gown, "I think I want to set it aside right now. Although I guess I'll have to thank Lanie for buying you this one too."

"She didn't buy it. That one was mine. I've had it for a long time; she just found it and put it in the bag."

The smile dropped off his face right away and his face was filled almost instantaneously with disappointment that he just couldn't hide. He knew she'd had other lovers, but still...

When she saw his face, she realized what her words must have implied to him. She shook her head as she placed a hand on his cheek. "No, Rick. You're the first one to see this gown. I've never worn it with...anyone else. I even had to cut the tags off of it in the bathroom."

At her reassurance, his face once again relaxed, and the full-watt grin returned as he uttered another, "Really?"

"Yes, really." She rolled her eyes, even though she secretly found his relief endearing and sweet. "But God, Castle, do you always stall this much?"

He was momentarily taken aback by her teasing. "Stall? You think I'm stalling?" he asked incredulously. Well, maybe he was, just a little bit. With how long he'd waited for her, he knew it could be over in a flash if he gave in to the hunger he had for her. So he made himself take his time and savor every moment.

But he never gave her a chance to answer his question as he put his fingers under the lace straps of the gown and began to pull them down her shoulders. She helped free her arms, and he slowly pushed the gown down over her hips until she was standing in front of him, bare, the gown now pooled on the floor. For something to do under his intense gaze, she reached for the waist of his boxers yet again, but this time, instead of just teasingly running her fingers under the waist, she pushed them down so he was just as bare as she was. She took her time, taking care to lift the waistband out and over the protruding evidence of his arousal. And then she stepped up against him, skin to skin, and pulled his head down to hers for the hottest kiss they'd had yet, mainly because they were both pressed against each other, now totally naked.

He somehow turned her around so she was by the bed, and when she felt the mattress behind her, she crawled onto it, but held his head where it was, never breaking the kiss. She scooted back and he followed as she laid down and pulled him on top of her. After all of the innuendo and he foreplay, and especially after all of the miscommunication of four years, she was ready for this; she was ready to feel him above her, around her, surrounding her. She'd run from him for so long, that now she wanted just the opposite, craved it. Craved him. When he was there, braced over her by his arms, she let out a gasp as she felt his hardness between her legs, feeling that he wanted her, too, in just the same way. He broke away from her mouth then, trailing kisses down her body until his mouth latched onto one pink nipple.

A jolt went through her, and she closed her eyes and just savored the feelings. She ran her fingers through his hair as she moved her body a bit, not really able to keep herself still with all that she was feeling, all that he was making her feel with his talented mouth and hands. When he started to trail kisses back up her body, she took one of her legs and wrapped it around him, rubbing her foot on the back of his leg. He groaned as the action brought him into slightly more intimate contact with her body. When he was right above her face, they both just stopped for several moments and stared into each other's eyes. She bracketed his face with her hands, just looking at him, still almost not really believing that he was here, there were no secrets betwen them. The feeling of him, where he was right now, was...glorious.

She was impatient, like he'd said. He only meant it as a joke, but it was true: she was impatient. She wanted him, them, together,_ now_.

They were sharing the bed; now she wanted to share _everything_ on the bed.

She used her hands that were still on his face to pull him down to her for another kiss, and then guided them around to his back. She almost lost herself in his kiss, because the man certainly knew how to kiss! But she still squirmed and shifted until she felt him right where she wanted him. He realized it then too, because he broke the kiss and looked at her. And when he saw the beginnings of a smile, he knew that she was teasing him.

And that was simply the _best_ way to be teased. She could tease him for the rest of his life if she teased him just like _that_.

His eyes widened slightly at her smile, but he knew he could get her back, simply by doing what she was asking for.

So he did, ever so slowly, but he did.

When she felt him, the smile did indeed drop off of her face and she couldn't help the sharp, breathy intake of breath, nor could she help arching toward him more.

When he saw her, part of him wanted to memorize her face at that very moment, while the other part of him wanted to just close his eyes and savor the feelings. He drew in a few ragged breaths, but he opted with keeping his eyes locked on hers, not able to look away. He'd looked into those beautiful, expressive eyes so many times, but now he saw yet another dimension to them. Arousal maybe. Or just...love.

She drew in another gaspy breath as they slowly completed their coupling. And then she gave him a glorious, sexy smile, and told him, just a little breathlessly, "Ah...nice to _feel_ you not stalling anymore."

"I thought...it was time to...ahem."

"Ahem?" she asked somewhat breathlessly.

"I don't think...there's a word...that can describe how good this feels," he said with something like a growl.

With that thought, his body took over and he started moving over her, in her, and she couldn't respond anymore. And she accepted him, acknowledged him, and started reciprocating his efforts. And when they moved in tandem like that, in perfect harmony with each other, it seemed like there was no way that this could be their first time. But just because it was, he knew he wouldn't last long, not with the buildup of today, and of the last four years. And as they moved together, she held him to her with her arms and legs. The sensations that they felt were intense, and rational thought ceased to exist for them. They were true partners now, in every sense.

When her eyes fluttered shut, she let out a breathy moan of "Oh, God...Rick..." and then she could say no more as her arms held him even more tightly and he felt her slowly begin to come apart around him. The feeling of her release, and knowing that_ he _was the one who did that to her, that it was all for him, because of him; it was too much. He couldn't hold out over the emotions, and the feelings of her around him, losing her control and essentially giving it to him.

He buried his face in her hair and breathed in her scent as he succumbed to his own release, panting, "Kate, oh...Kate," into her hair.

When his breathing slowed just a bit, he raised himself up to look into her face again. He saw a new smile on her face, one that almost took his breath away again, because he'd never seen it on her before: the smile of a wonderfully satisifed _lover_.

She knew she was smiling, but after that, how could she not? God, what they did together...it wasn't wild or extreme (not this time, anyway), and it didn't even last all that long (although at that point, neither of them could have handled prolonging it any more), but it was intense and wonderful and...right. She felt like birds shoud be singing and double rainbows should be stretched across the ceiling. Hell, she wouldn't be surprised if she saw a damn unicorn right then. So...a smile? Hell, yes. She knew she was smiling. And she didn't care if he saw it.

And he did see it and he evidently liked it, because his face face soon bloomed into what must have been the mirror image to her smile. And she unconsciously prepared herself for whatever cocky, boastful retort was going to come out of his mouth. Because with that smile, she knew that he wouldn't be able to resist making some kind of a comment.

But she never, not in a million years, expected what he did end up saying. And because she wasn't expecting it, and because of where they were, and what they'd just done, it hit her. It just leveled her, even though it shouldn't have. Because Rick Castle, playboy, millionaire, the man that she'd just had mindblowing sex with and was looking at her like he'd just scored the biggest deal of his life, told her simply, "I love you."

* * *

_**There we are, ladies and gentlemen. I hope you enjoyed the aheming (or should that word have a double 'm'? Hmmm...). But like I said earlier, I haven't written smut/M-rated stuff in a looooong time. So please, let me know what you think, but also please be gentle. If it's awful, I can totally gloss over the M-rated stuff in future chapters and get them back to teasing or something else. **__**I really do want the comments, whatever they might be, so I would greatly appreciate it you would take the time to leave me one. Story alerts or favorites are great, but reviews are better b/c they tell me something about what you like and what works for the story.**_

_**"Undead Again": I feel like I have to comment on it. Not what I expected, but it was so amazing in its simplicity. Everyone—me included—seemed to think that they'd have some big Aha moment/argument when he let her know that he knew that she remembered. But once again, it was all done in subtext, but good and not extreme subtext, where you just knew that they were thinking the exact same things, instead of being left wondering. In retrospect, although I've found the subtext completely maddening and overdone at times, this use of the subtext completely fits the feel of the show. And it was overt enough to not be maddening. And the promos for the finale...no spoilers, although I will say...WOW!**_

_**So now, back to my story, please give me your thoughts. If you hated it, you can tell me, but try to phrase it nicely so I won't want to crawl in a hole and play facebook games all day. :) **_

_**I'm xxGoogiexx on twitter and tumblr. Feel free to tweet or follow or whatever.**_

_**ETA: Since I published this chapter this morning, I've gotten a few reviews for this story so far (and thank you very much for reviewing, by the way) that have alluded to the fact that this seems like the end of the story. It's um...not. At least I didn't mean for it to be the end. Unless you want it to be the end? If you do, let me know. But the overwhelming consensus a couple of chapters ago was that they had to 'ahem' (done; well, at least once), and then they had to be let out of the room. So I'm still working under that line of thought.**_


	13. Good Grades

_**Sorry for the long delay in posting this. And...Happy Castle Season Finale Day! Although writing that is kind of bittersweet; while it promises to be an epic show, it also means no Castle for 4 months, which is truly sad.**_

_**I'm going to issue a warning: this chapter is really M, so if you don't like M stuff, don't read it, and just wait for the next chapter.**_

_**Disclaimer: I don't own them. That's obvious, right?**_

* * *

Her eyes got serious, and he got worried.

He really shouldn't have been worried, but they'd just made love for the first time and she _had been_ smiling, and she seemed like she enjoyed it, but then he told her that he loved her, and she just...stared at him. With no smile, with no 'I love you' back. It was really only a couple of seconds, but it seemed like an eternity to him, especially when he'd just been on top of the world. He was still looking down at her, their faces inches apart, their naked bodies pressed together, but he suddenly felt further away from her right then than he had at any time in the last several hours.

"Kate?" he asked, "Is something...did I do something wrong?"

She squeezed her eyes shut for a moment, and when she opened them again, they were moist. "No," she whispered. "You did everything right." And then she punctuated her words with a little smile.

"Are you...sure?"

She nodded. "Yeah. It's good."

He breathed a little easier at her words, but he still asked, "You were smiling, but then you got all serious...are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry." She ran her arms up his sides and clasped them around his back, just holding him to her. "I could hardly think straight after...that, and I just expected you to come up with some typical Castle thing to say, and you just...I didn't expect it right then, okay? And it caught me off-guard."

"You didn't expect me to say I love you?" His voice still held a hint of confusion.

"Uh...no? I mean, I thought...I guess I thought you'd just say something else. I mean, I'm not upset..."

The slight embarrassment in her voice as she explained her surprised state was endearing. He laid his forehead against hers lightly. And it made him realize that this was just one more thing that they'd have to overcome: talking directly _about_ things, instead of just _around_ things. "Good. But you're going to have to get used to it, okay? I plan to say it a _lot_," he finished, making it sound like something of a threat while giving her lips a tender kiss. Then he pulled back, and continued, "And at the risk of sounding like a parent, we need to use our words more, especially if one little 'I love you' throws you for a loop like that."

"It didn't throw me for a loop," she countered quickly, automatically trying to refute what he said. But hell, who was she kidding? And weren't they doing honesty? "Okay, fine, it did. But I just didn't—"

"—expect it, I know," he finished for her. "But why? I mean, after _that_," he said with a raised eyebrow, making it clear that _that_ was their previous burst of activity, "why would you _not_ expect me to say that I love you? I mean, it was...and I..." He'd just been so good with words, but now he was suddenly so bad. "It was amazing, and it was...you, and you're amazing, and I love you, and you know it, and...it was just amazing."

His words weren't eloquent in normal Castle-style, but that made them even more heartfelt for her, more precious. And he used his words, like he said, even though his words were less than his usual graceful style. And she had some words herself that she wanted to use, words that were starting to roll off her tongue more easily every time she said them. "It _was_," she agreed with a shy smile as she bit her lip, agreeing with his assessment. "And I really love you too."

He didn't look confused anymore. Now he just looked happy, with a grin splitting his face, like he was going to burst. _There_ was the Castle she expected. So she just did the most appropriate thing she could think of doing. She kissed the grin off of his face.

She was beginning to really like kissing expressions off his face.

Mindful that he was still laying on her, he rolled onto his back then, taking her with him. When their positions were reversed, she broke the kiss and looked down at him, her hair falling around his face and pleasantly tickling his shoulders. He liked being above her before, with the feeling of his body trapping her, pushing her into the sheets, where she couldn't get away from him. But now this position, where she was above him, looking down at him, laying on him, _in a bed_...he was finding that he liked that position just as much.

She stretched out on him, pressing a kiss to his jaw. "Pretty swift move there, hot shot," she told him, grinning back at him.

"I have more, if you're interested," he told her with a raised eyebrow.

"I just bet you do," she volleyed. But then she moved her body slightly to the side and trailed her hand slowly down his body. "And I might have a few of my own, too," she said, finding him with her hand and watching his eyes widen when she did.

"Kate...that's..."

"Oh, I think I know what it is, Castle," she said with devilish grin as her hand encircled him. But he surprised her when his hand shot to her arm as he tried to pull her hand away.

"Kate...I...no. I need...time. I'm not...it's kind of..."

She looked at him, realization dawning on her that he was a little bit embarrassed at his post-coital state, which was, of course, now somewhat relaxed. "I know you need a bit of...downtime, shall we say. Don't worry, Rick; it's not a test, and I'm not grading you," she said as she still held his somewhat lax manhood in her hand. "But I thought that maybe a little...tutoring session might not hurt the chances of you being able to get _up_...on the material more quickly."

Her hand started working on him then, as she gave him a lusty look below a seductively raised single eyebrow. He had one of those 'is this really happening?' moments as he stared at her blankly and tried to reconcile his knowlege of Kate Beckett—which, in this type of situation, was virtually nonexistent—with the woman who was now fondling him intimately after having just spoken some very blatant sexual innuendo. To him. And with the feelings that were starting to course through him, a sly grin appeared on his face when he realized that yes, this really was indeed happening to him. With her.

And then the other thought invaded his brain: already? She was ready for more...already? And that made his grin, along with other things, just a little bigger.

She peppered some kisses down his jaw toward his ear, and when she nibbled on his earlobe, he exhaled a ragged breath before he told her, "I'm sure I would have gotten straight A's if all of my tutoring sessions had been like this." And after feeling what her hand was trying to do to him down there, and what it was starting to succeed in doing, he had serious doubts as to whether or not he'd be able to look at her hands again without remembering this moment and getting aroused.

He needed something to distract his mind—and her—from what she was doing, so he decided to let his fingers do the walking too.

He turned toward her just a bit as his fingers lightly palmed her naked rear befor they trailed up her naked side until they found her naked breast. After palming it, he ran his thumb around her nipple until it the delicate tip had hardened from his attention. Her hand, which was still 'tutoring' that certain part of him, matched his action when she used her own thumb to teasingly circle his head. But her ministrations had quite the effect on his sensitive area as her thumbnail lightly scraped on the tender tip. And with her attention, combined with the time he had to now let his hands explore more of her body, it wasn't nearly as long as he thought it would be before he was ready for more.

As she felt him respond to her, she rose up above him to look down into his eyes, with a teasing grin on her face but a very aroused look in her eyes. "Why, Castle, I never knew you could be such a good student!" she said, giving him the mock praise in a low, husky voice. "You seem to be _embracing_ the lesson quite well." As she emphasized the word, her hand gave him a firm squeeze and a lingering caress that had him inhaling sharply. She let her hand trail off of him as it moved up his body, and she moved with catlike grace until she was over him.

And then there she was, straddling him, bodies pressed together intimately once again, her hands on his shoulders, pressing him down into the pillows as she stared at him with a predatory look on her face. And suddenly, that one small breath that he'd just taken seemed to get stuck in his lungs as she continued to gaze hungrily at him, as she started to move her hips just a bit. It wasn't a lot, but it was enough.

As he gazed up at her, he couldn't help but think that he must have died and gone to some X-rated heaven. Because there was the woman of his dreams, naked and sitting on top of him, straddling him, taking control. Her beautiful hair was all flowing down one side of her head, and her eyes were heavy with passion. Her lips were full and slightly swollen and had that well-kissed look. And when his eyes traveled lower, down her body...well, he almost had to close his eyes at the sight of her bare breasts in front of him. Having waited so long for her, on some level it still didn't compute for him that he was actually experiencing this. In the flesh. A _lot_ of bare, naked, beautiful flesh.

After their locked eyes transmitted their mutual desire, she raised up slightly so she could position herself above him. Although their first bout of lovemaking was spectacular, she wanted more. She needed more. She felt like she had this craving for him now; she'd had a little taste their first time, and now she wanted another, and probably another after that. And she thought that if she knew anything about Castle, he would _not_ object.

So she took control. She knew he'd need some time, but she thought that eventually he'd be ready again, and in the meantime, she could have a little bit of fun exploring his body. She was still learning what turned him on, and she wanted to see what worked. And it was a little bit of a challenge to her to see if she could hasten that recovery time.

And now, as she sat above him with his tip poised at her entrance, she looked right into his eyes and gave him a sassy smile as she sank down, letting him impale her most sensitive area. She couldn't stop a contented sigh from escaping her lips as she felt him fill her. She wiggled her hips from side to side, wanting to make sure he was in her as deeply as he could be, when he closed his eyes and murmured, "Ahhhhh...Kate..."

Ah, add that to the list of things that he likes, she thought. But then again, it felt pretty good to her too.

She started moving on him, raising up and back slowly so he slid out of her a bit, but not all the way, before thrusting her hips down and forward again. She did that a few times before his hands came up to fondle the breasts that were shaking in front of him as a result of her movements. He used his thumb and forefinger to lightly pinch and roll each nipple, alternating that movement with just palming her breasts and gently squeezing the orbs. She had her hands on his shoulders, bracing herself as she continued to work her hips on him and around him.

Somehow, while he loved her breasts, he knew that there were other things he could do with his hands. He let them trail down her sides to cup her bottom as she moved on him. Holding her like that, he helped her with a little more force every time she brought them fully together again, and the added force evoked a more erotic feeling, if that was possible. He saw her close her eyes for a brief second, and he knew she was beginning to lose herself in the act, as she kept moving and striving toward finding her pleasure with him.

Her eyes shot open and fixed on his as she gasped out a ragged breath when he sneaked his fingers of one of his hands down between them and managed to find her exact right spot. Her hips never stopped pumping, and in fact, they seem to increase their speed and momentum just a bit as she was no longer just trying to drive him further into her, she was also trying to drive herself closer to his magic fingers. She looked so awestruck and totally and completely aroused, and she felt so good to him that it was all he could do to not just roughly flip her over and pound into her with everything he had. So he kept his fingers where they were, and he kept his other hand on her hip, encouraging her rhythm as she tried to take them both toward bliss.

And he didn't want to take either of his hands away from what they were doing, but there was just on problem: her breasts—those beautiful orbs that, courtesy of her motions, were wiggling their pink-tipped lusciousness above him—were just bare. Unattended. Neglected. And he felt compelled to do something about that, using the only means that he could. He raised his head off the pillow and took on of the pink tips in his mouth, sucking on it and running his tongue around it.

She gasped. "God," she panted when she felt his tongue. She watched as he took her breast in his mouth, insanely aroused by the sight, and she unconsciously pressed it closer to him while still trying to maintain the motion in the lower part of her body. And that was enough to topple her over the edge of the cliff, as her orgasm suddenly shot through her like white hot lightning. It was almost without warning and it was powerful, and she could only pant out breathy, unintelligible moans as the waves of ecstacy washed through her.

When her release hit her, she lost her previous sense of purpose as she let the tremors of her release overtake her. And while the feeling of her contracting around him was extraordinary, he didn't want to stop the other dance that they were finding they did so well together. He grabbed both or her hips with his hands and he didn't let their mutual motion stop; in fact, he increased it, hoping that it would preserve her ecstacy while she rode it out. He was like a madman, posessed, as he pulled her hips down onto him as he tried to raise his hips and drive himself into her further with every stroke. She was powerless to stop him, and she just leaned on his shoulders and hung on for the ride.

This time, he was finding that he had a lot more stamina for making it last. Part of him wanted to give in, because he knew it would be more mind-blowing than the first time, but the other part of him wanted to see if he could hold out long enough for her to find her bliss a second time. She was so responsive, and as always, he was observing her reactions and was using that to try to learn more about what she liked. When he felt that she'd resumed the pace of their movements enough on her own, he let his hands trail up her sides lightly, which earned him a shiver as she felt the tickle, before coming to the front of her to play with her breasts again.

She didn't know how, but she'd just experienced what was probably the most intense orgasm she'd ever had, and yet she still wanted more. And from the way Rick was responding to her, he was trying to make sure she had it. She just hoped she survived it.

But now that she had her mind back for at least a little bit, she realized that she wanted to see if there was anything else she could do to entice him. He was occupied with her breasts, and she took the opportunity to tease him by letting him slip almost all the way out of her. When he felt himself about to come free, his eyes shot to hers to find her biting her lip in that sexy way she had. Oh, she was teasing him. But that just wasn't nice. Oh, it _felt_ nice, but she was...oh, man. He lost his train of thought as she quickly fixed their separation problem by thrusting her hips toward him again. The feeling created by that much motion...she may have been teasing him, but he couldn't complain about the end result. And then she did it again. He huffed out a ragged breath and she knew what she was doing was working on his composure.

She stopped her movements for a moment and leaned forward to find his lips with hers. Even joined together the way they were, she still felt a jolt when their tongues did their own mating dance during the kiss. It was meant to be a little break to prolong things, but it had just the opposite effect as it made them both more hungry for each other. And she couldn't stay still as she began to wiggle her hips from side to side as she tried to rub her breasts back and forth on his naked chest. She felt his hands come around to her backside, encouraging her to increase her motions as he massaged her derriere.

This time, she felt the slow burn start deep within her, and she knew where she was headed. She pushed off of him and sat up more, but let her hips keep thrusting over his. The angle was a little different this way, and it was hitting everything just right for her.

Rick knew it was about the end for him too, especially when he saw her sit up and felt her start moving over him with lustful abandon. Their bodies, where they were joined, were so slick now, and the feelings that were created with the motion of her hips was just exquisite. "Kate...I'm...come on..." he told her. He tried to talk, but the words, what he could actually utter, came out in breathless pants.

It wasn't eloquent, but she got the message. And knowing that he was close, she spurred him on, unable to stop now. Mindless, he grabbed her hips and pulled her down on him hard as he thrusted his own hips up and into her even harder than before. She let out a startled, but erotic sounding gasp as he did that same thing one, and then two more times. And he felt his last tenuous thread of control snap as he gave into his release and began to spill into her. "Kate," he almost grunted, but wasn't able to anything else but moan. But he didn't need words, because that last burst of energy from him with the feeling of him finally climaxing inside her triggered her own release.

She'd wanted more, and now she was getting more. More than she'd ever imagined.

Her breathy whimpers of "oh" mixed with his pants of "yes" as he felt her walls contract around him as he shuddered into her. Them reaching that pinnacle together only seemed to prolong the ecstacy for both of them as their pants and nonsensical words seemed to go on and on.

Eventually their mutual motion slowed, and she bonelessly melted down onto his chest. She could feel the fast heartbeat in his chest that matched her own. His arms snaked around her back and he gave her a quick hug before letting his arms lightly fall to the bed again. She moved off his chest to his side, but still stayed snuggled against him as they tried to let their heartbeats and their breathing return to normal.

"Did I pass the test?" he wondered aloud, still sounding somewhat winded. She suspected he knew the answer already, but she also suspected that he just wanted to gloat about how good it was.

"There wasn't a test, remember? Said I wasn't grading you."

"But if you did grade me?" he prompted.

"You just really want me to feed your ego, don't you?" she chided.

"Hey, there's nothing wrong with asking for a bit of honest feedback."

She sighed as she smiled into his chest, pressing a kiss to his cooling skin before she raised her head up to look at him. "My response wasn't enough for you?" she asked. He raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, fine. A-plus," she told him, already anticipating the grin that she knew would be forming on his face. But turnabout was fair play. "So how would you grade me, if you were the teacher?"

His fingers rubbed lightly on the bare skin of her back. "Without a doubt, you'd be the star of the Gifted and Talented Program." He hummed out a sound of satisfaction as if he were remembering parts of what just happened between them. "You weren't kidding when you said you had a few moves of your own."

"Couldn't let you think I was all talk."

He gazed at her for a loaded moment before he cupped the back of her head and urged her toward him for a kiss. And before he said it, she figured out what was coming next.

"Love you." And she was right.

And for once, it didn't startle her. He was making good on his promise to say it a lot. And she responded in kind with her own echo of his words, not because she felt forced to do it by him saying the words first, but just because she really wanted to say them. They shared another peck of a kiss, and then she snuggled back into his side again after reaching to pull a blanket over them both.

As they both drifted off to sleep, she had a thought, and smiled against his chest.

"What?" he asked sleepily.

"I'm just really glad we had that spinach earlier. I really like what you do with your extra energy."

* * *

_**Hope I caught all of the typos. My keyboard likes to play games with me when I'm typing, like not putting in spaces. Usually I catch them, but not always. **_

_**For those of you not in the US, a lot of the accellerated learning programs for gifted students in the schools around here are called 'Gifted and Talented' or 'Talented and Gifted', so that's what is referenced at the end of the chapter. It's beyond the A+ designation, which is something that I totally think Castle would say.**_

_**So...thoughts? **_

_**If you made it through the M stuff, I hope you enjoyed the chapter.**_


	14. Breakfast

_**Compared to the speed with which I cranked out the first bunch of chapters, I know there's been a huge delay for this one. Sorry. I did publish a couple of one-shots since the last chapter of this story, "Open Your Eyes" and "How Do I Love Thee", so you can check those out if you haven't already. And I also learned to never publish a chapter on a Castle Monday, especially on a Castle season finale Monday. And thanks to IrrationalObsessions, who kind of put into words what crossed my mind; even though the context was different, chapter 13 could have been the natural unseen extension of what happened after the hand-holding that we saw in the finale (well, maybe with chapter 12 first and then 13).**_

_**This chapter contains extremely minor spoilers for a few things from season 2, but really, if you haven't seen season 2 yet, what are you doing reading this fic? ;)**_

_**Disclaimer: I have no rights to the characters.**_

* * *

She knew it was early, from the way the barest hint of the morning sun shone into the room. But she was a naturally early riser, and they'd gone to bed the night before at some insanely early hour anyway.

Although they certainly hadn't gone to sleep as soon as they'd gone to bed, now had they? Thinking of what had transpired since the evening before, she couldn't help but smile as she turned her head slightly to look at the still-unconscious man next to her. Oh, the memories of last night...

Even with the scenario of them being locked in a room together against their will, it was perfect. For them, it was perfect.

Her mind flitted back over the last few days, starting with Martha and how they'd both been locked here, with her so stunned to find him handcuffed to the bed.

The handcuffs. _'Next time, without the tiger,'_ she remembered saying to him all of those months ago. And they _did_ have handcuffs now...

If Rick had been awake, he would have been a little bit intrigued and more than a little bit worried to see the evil grin that bloomed on her face at the thought.

With catlike grace, she slid over to the edge of the bed and silently opened the drawer on the nightstand where they'd stashed the handcuffs. She took care to quietly lift them out so they wouldn't clank against each other. She was counting on the element of surprise, so minimizing extraneous noise was key.

She moved his arms carefully, ever so slowly into position. She knew the cuffs would make noise when she locked them, so she got everything into place and then, thanks to her occupational familiarity with the cuffs, snapped them all closed in a flash.

She was right; the sound did startle Rick, but surprisingly, he didn't wake up fully. But Kate was nothing if not resourceful, so she set out to wake her lover using whatever feminine methods of persuasion that she could. And as she trailed wet kisses over his chest, and lower, she felt him give a slight jerk, which was followed by a sleepy-sounding, "Kate?"

"Were you expecting someone else?" she asked lazily as she raised over him and saw that yes, his eyes were now indeed open, and he looked as though, in his sleep-muddled state, he was still trying to get his brain wrapped around the fact that Kate—a very _naked_ Kate—was wrapped around _him_, in a bed, torturing him with sensuous kisses in the shadows of the early morning light. He stared at her with a shell-shocked look for two long beats, and then she saw the moment when he remembered the night before. She knew he remembered because there was just no way he could hide that grin of male pride and extreme satisfaction. She leaned down and touched her lips to his, once again enjoying kissing the smirk off of his face. After she pulled away, she gave him a sultry, "Good morning."

"Ah, that it is, my de—" his words stopped abruptly as he went to embrace her, but found that he couldn't. His eyes immediately went to find out what was wrong with his arms, and when he registered the handcuffs around his right wrist, tethering him to the bed for the second time in three days, his jaw dropped in shock. His head whipped around to look at his left wrist, where he found the mirror image of his right wrist dilemma. Then, ever so slowly, he turned his head again to let his gaze fall on the woman who was still poised above him, who was now grinning coyly.

"Well, there's no tiger this time," she told him with a shrug.

And seeing the grin on her face, seeing the lust in her eyes, and knowing he was trapped, by her, he wasn't sure that his chances of survival would be any greater this time. "Oh, my God," was all he could think to say. As she dipped her head to kiss him, and she started running her hands all over his body, and started moving above him, he was wondering if he was going to survive. He thought she was hot before, but that was nothing compared to this. But he didn't really care, because at that point, he realized that if he was going to die, there couldn't possibly be a better way to go.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

He didn't die. But afterwards, he wouldn't have minded a little bit of oxygen.

"Can you get these things...off my wrists now? I need to...relax," he told her amidst still-labored breathing, "and I can't do that when I'm...shackled like this."

"Hey, I did most of the work!"

"No argument there," he agreed, his breathing still labored, "but I'd still like my hands free. And then we're going to talk about that little trick you pulled on me."

"What, you didn't enjoy yourself?" she asked with mock disappointment.

"I think you know the answer to that," he said dryly. "Just uncuff me, okay? I might have to go to the bathroom, you know."

With those words of his, she realized she didn't really want to find out if he was bluffing or not, so she raised up and unlocked the cuffs after grabbing the key from the nightstand. She left the cuffs shackled to the bed frame after she released his wrists, and then she tossed the key back on the nightstand before settling back down by him. With his arms now free, he wasted no time in turning onto his side and throwing an arm over her midsection, gathering her close as he nuzzled his face in her hair. "Much better," he whispered, his hot breath giving her a little shiver. "While I certainly enjoyed your...attention, shall we say, I do like the ability to touch you the way I want."

"Balance?" she inquired, once again feeling sleepy.

"Exactly. Good things are good, but too much of a good thing ceases to be good anymore."

She knew what he meant, but she couldn't help smiling. "You must be tired if that was the best you could do. I mean, that was just so..._not_ Rick Castle."

"Yeah, yeah. I do need some sleep, I guess. _Someone_ woke me up and then I was rather...restrained. And then she made me put out for her! Can you believe it? It was like I was her sex toy or something," he said with a smirk.

She felt like rolling her eyes. "And you loved every minute of it."

She felt the chuckle in his chest where she laid against him as he confirmed, "You got that right."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The next time she awoke, the room was considerably brighter, letting her know that it was now later in the day. And along with the room being brighter, as she opened her eyes and moved around she noticed that the bed was also considerably colder, and emptier. Sitting up and looking around, she wondered where Castle had gone to. It couldn't be far, she thought as her eyes took in the still-closed door.

Then her nose registered the aroma of something cooking from their cooking closet. Was that...pancakes? At the smell, she realized how hungry she was. It had been a while since she'd burned that many calories overnight, she thought with a smile as she got out of bed.

As her feet hit the floor, she stepped on the forgotten red nightgown from the night before. She very briefly considered putting it back on, but discarded that thought as she realized that the pancakes would probably become a fire hazard quite quickly once he saw her in that gown again. Scrambling into the bathroom, she grabbed one of Castle's t-shirts that had been hanging on one of the hooks. It was actually the same t-shirt that he'd pulled over her head the morning before when he'd been too tempted by the green nightgown.

She padded softly into the closet, where she found him wearing just a pair of boxers and very happily flipping pancakes while softly whistling some kind of tune. As she recognized it, she smiled as she wrapped her arms around him from behind. "A little Foreigner this morning?"

He was so engrossed in his thoughts and whistling and pancake-flipping that he didn't even have any sense that she was there until he felt her embrace. He looked over his shoulder at her with a surprised look that quickly gave way to a genuine smile. "Morning, beautiful," he told her, leaning back to give her a kiss. He felt like grinning more when she turned her face up and met his lips with no hesitation. Well, that was easy, he thought. A lot more comfortable than yesterday.

Then he remembered her previous question...Foreigner? "Huh?" he asked.

"Foreigner...your whistling? Really, Castle...'Hot Blooded'? _That's_ the song you picked? I personally had you pegged more for a Billy Joel man, myself."

He looked momentarily confused as he thought back to the tune that he'd been unconsciously whistling. Then he shrugged as he turned around to scoop a pancake off the griddle and flip it onto a plate. "After last night, my dear detective, and _certainly_ after this morning, I guess I must have thought it fit." He shot a raised eyebrow and a grin back at her before he turned to flip another pancake, letting her know exactly what he was remembering. "Although I have to say now that I think about it, maybe 'Prisoner of Love' would be a better song for us right now, with us being, you know, locked in this room."

"Prisoner of...you mean, David Bowie?" she asked as she let go of him and reached down to the small refrigerator, grabbing the carton of orange juice.

"No, Perry Como. The really old song; it was written...oh, sometime around the Great Depression, I think."

"I'm not sure I know that one. Can you look...oh, no, you can't."

"Can't what?"

"I was going to say you can look it up on your phone, but we don't have internet." She grabbed a couple of cups and poured the orange juice. "So when do you think we'll be getting out of here, anyway? We're going to have to go back to work sometime."

He nodded, staring off into space for a minute as he thought of something. "And I really want a nice meal. Steak. Maybe a good seafood dish. Something that can't be cooked on an electric griddle in a closet. But I don't know," he answered as he plated the rest of the pancakes, then picked up both plates in his hands. "I suppose we could use Hello Kitty to call Alexis and ask her, but after she trapped me in here, I almost don't want to give her the satisfaction of asking. I bet she's reallllllly wondering why we haven't called her yet." He looked like he was enjoying the thought of Alexis being preoccupied with him _not_ bugging her about being let out, mainly because it was the one form of revenge that he was capable of meting out right then.

She took the cups of orange juice and the syrup and started to walk back to the bedroom. When she reached their usual dining place, she turned around to find him in the doorway, just staring at her with a satisfied smirk on his face. "What?" she asked.

"You. I just really like you in that t-shirt of mine. I mean, I like you out of it better, but I really like _you_ in it a lot more than I like me in it now."

She just rolled her eyes at him and sat down on the floor. Stretching her legs out in front of her, she held out her hands for one of the plates. After he gave her the plate, he continued to stare at her long, bare legs for a few extended moments, before snapping himself out of it and saying 'whew' with a little head-shake.

She caught his appreciative look at her bare legs. Whereas before yesterday she might have glared at him (or worse), now things were different. _Now_ she could fully appreciate those looks that he gave her, or those comments that he made about her. _Now_ it wasn't an annoyance. _Now_, she realized, she welcomed his appreciation for not only her body, but for her mind or just generally...her. They didn't have to dance around things anymore. It still took some getting used to, though, and while her first inclination was to roll her eyes or call him on it, her second, stronger inclination _now_ was to merely look at him, and wait for him to look at her face. And when he did, she raised her eyebrow at him while giving him a sultry glare, and then bent one of those long legs, teasing him by pointing her toes and trailing that foot up the opposite calf before letting it relax straight again. His gaze was drawn from her face back to her legs when she started to move them, and once she was relaxed again, she saw him swallow thickly.

She decided to take some pity on him. "Sit down, Rick. And let's eat." She looked down at the plate he was handing her, and something jumped out of her subconscious. "Pancakes," she said as she picked up her fork.

He looked at her questioningly from where he was now sitting on the floor side of her. "You just _now_ noticed that I made pancakes? I have to say, you're not very quick this morning, Beckett." And he punctuated that statement by shoving a bite of syrup-covered pancake in his mouth.

She swatted him lightly. "No, I could smell what you made even before I saw them. It was just that I just remembered something Esposito said a while ago."

His brows furrowed. "We just spent the night together—quite an amazing night, I might add—and you're thinking about Esposito?"

"That's sort of my point. Remember right before my place blew up and you stayed on my couch? And you cooked pancakes the next morning when Dunn left us the body? Esposito made a comment about pancakes being an edible way to say 'thanks for last night' or something like that."

He looked from her face, to the pancakes, back to her face again. When he spoke, it was in a calm, serious tone. "Kate, mere pancakes cannot express my gratitude, or my feelings about last night." And then before she could answer, he leaned over and gave her a syrup-flavored kiss. It was just a light one, but once again, it was one of those things that she still hadn't learned to expect quite so soon after this change in their relationship, so it caught her off-guard.

She still responded unconsciously, because she was discovering that it was hard _not_ to respond when he kissed her, whether she was prepared for it or not. And soon, the thought of eating the pancakes was forgotten as they deepened the kiss. It was only supposed to be a little sign of affection, but when outward shows of affection had been stifled as long as theirs had been, even little signs of affection could quickly ignite into full-blown passion very quickly. She turned toward him and blindly raised up on her knees, leaning into him. Then, once again, she felt like she needed to be closer to him, right _now_. And he evidently thought the same thing. She reached one leg over his lap suddenly, straddling him, but as he tugged her against him, she surged at him, just a bit off-balance, and tried to catch herself against his shoulder. But they both forgot that she was still holding her fork from when she was preparing to eat her breakfast.

The tines on the fork were sharp.

She didn't know how sharp. But Castle did, and he found out when instead of simply catching herself on his shoulder with her hand, the force of his tug ended up driving the tines of the fork into his upper arm near his shoulder as she tried to catch herself against him.

They broke the kiss—or rather, _he_ broke the kiss—when he cried out, "Holy hell, Kate!" He looked quickly at his shoulder as she pulled back. "Ow! My God, woman, look what you did! Are you insane? It's bleeding!" He spoke in a loud, high pitched voice as he looked at the fork sticking out of his shoulder. Then he looked at her in astonishment, finding that her face matched his, and then back at his shoulder again.

"Oh, Rick...God..." she stammered. "I'm sorry...I...I'll get..."

She was about to move off of his lap to see if there were some kind of first-aid supplies in the bathroom when he pinned her with his gaze and made her stop her movements. "You stabbed me with a fork!" he said incredulously.

She was still straddling his lap, and he was taking some deep breaths while looking alternately at her and the fork in his shoulder. And then, despite her shock at hurting him, she was able to take in the big picture of him sitting there, wearing only a pair of boxers, hair mussed from sleep (and other things) the night before, with a fork sticking out of his shoulder. And the scene just hit her all of a sudden, and she couldn't hold back the giggles, even though she tried.

His gaze settled on her. "You're laughing?" he asked.

"Castle, you have a...fork...sticking out of your shoulder," she managed to get out among snickers.

"Should I take it out?" he asked, sounding just a little whiny.

"Castle, really." She raised her eyebrow at him and tried for a stern look, although it was hard when he still had a fork sticking out of his shoulder and she was trying not to laugh. "Of _course_ you should pull it out. Unless you want me to take a picture of it or something first."

A picture of a fork in his shoulder? "No," he answered quickly.

"Okay." Now she did move off his lap, and standing up, told him, "Come on, let's go into the bathroom and try to clean that up. And get you de-forked," she said with another snicker.

"Oh, sure," he told her as he gingerly tried to raise up too. "Stab me with a fork and then laugh at me."

"You did pull me, so it wasn't _all_ my fault."

"Why were you holding a fork anyway?" But as soon as the words were out of his mouth, they both turned back to see the plates of pancakes sitting on the floor, rapidly cooling. They looked at each other, and then he said, "Well, there's always the microwave to warm them up."

She finished leading him into the bathroom as she said, "But I'm getting a different fork. There's no way I'm eating off the fork that was just stuck in your shoulder."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The captives had been in the room for a few days, so the conspirators figured that it was time to let them out. They didn't know what had transpired, although they had hopes that they'd been able to get things worked out once and for all. Alexis knew, from the other detectives, that Beckett (and presumably her dad) had to be back to work the next day, so since it was late enough in the morning already, she figured they'd want some of the day out of the room. Everyone was waiting downstairs, having sent her upstairs to knock on the door and alert the two captives to the fact that they were being released. The guys figured that Alexis would be the least likely to be killed on sight when she opened the door, and she got majority vote.

She walked hesitantly up to the door. She reached up to knock but froze just as she heard an exclamation from the inside of the room. Her jaw dropped as she heard her dad's voice: "Ow! My God, woman, look what you did! Are you insane? It's bleeding!"

Bleeding? Her dad was hurt? Beckett hurt him?

She retreated away from the door and quietly ran back down the stairs. The look on her face must have clued in the others that something was wrong. "What's wrong, Little Castle?" Esposito asked.

"Dad...he...I was going to knock on the door, and then I hear Dad shout at Beckett and ask her if she was insane and look what she did and then he said something was bleeding!"

"Bleeding? Maybe..." Ryan said, trying to think of some explanation. He looked at Esposito, and they shared a look that said 'Oh, crap. Has Beckett really lost it this time?' Maybe her breaking point was being locked in the same room with him for a few days. Maybe they were wrong about them working out their differences.

But they didn't want to face that thought, or certainly voice it out loud when the possible victim's daughter was right there.

Lanie, who had been silent up until now, said, "Listen, I'm sure there's nothing wrong. They're probably just going back and forth with each other like they do all the time. Maybe your dad just...oh, stubbed his toe or something, and Kate was telling him not to be a baby." Her voice was calm, but she did shoot a look at the guys, as if to say that she hoped she was right. And she didn't even address the fact that it sounded like Kate intentionally did something to him. "Uh, okay. Let's do this. I don't think any of us want to be around anymore when they get out, right?" She looked around and saw several nods. "Good. Alexis, you go up and unlock the door, and then run back down here and we'll leave. After we're gone, you can send a text to that cute little phone and tell them that the door is unlocked. Then they can calm down before they see us, right?"

"You guys will come back with me later?" Alexis asked worriedly. "I mean, we're all in this together. You can't bail on me now, especially when my dad might be hurt or something."

Lanie saved the day by pointing out the obvious. "Alexis, remember, you haven't gotten one single call from their emergency phone, so you know things can't be that bad. Not one, single call. If Kate were really trying to murder your dad, he would have called by now, right?"

Put like that, Alexis felt better. She thought back to how Kate was during the hostage standoff in the bank, and she knew that the person she saw that day would never do anything to harm her dad. "Okay," she finally admitted, nodding. "Right."

"So go up there and unlock that door, then we'll get out of here," Lanie told her with an encouraging smile.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"Ow! It stings!"

"Castle, don't be a baby."

"Hey, you stab me, you don't get to call me a baby," he pouted.

"And I have to buy you dinner, right?" He looked at her questioningly, but still grimaced comically because of the slight sting of the peroxide. "Or is that only for vampire bites?" she asked with a smirk.

Ah, he remembered the 'vampire' bite. "I'll take dinner too, but once we get out of here." And then, after raking his eyes down her t-shirt clad body, he added, "And you have to wear something slinky."

"I can do that." She raised up to give him a kiss. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stab you with a fork." It was still funny, but she really didn't mean to injure him, even a little.

"I'm going to have to get silverware that isn't quite as sharp," he mused.

"At least it wasn't that deep."

"Deep enough!"

"Castle, it was only a millimeter or two."

"It broke my skin! And it was _stuck_ in there!" he argued, his flair for the dramatic showing through.

"A paper cut breaks skin too." She gave him another kiss. "Come on. We've been cleaning it for ten or fifteen minutes by now. I don't even think a hospital would clean it that long. Let's go see if we can salvage your pancakes. I'm hungry." She pushed herself off of the vanity where she'd been leaning, grabbed his hand, and led him back to the bedroom.

And when they left the bathroom and went back into the bedroom, neither of them knew that they were, essentially, free now. The door was now unlocked, and the Hello Kitty phone on the dresser now had a message on it telling them that the door was open.

But they didn't know that.

Neither of them even thought to try the door, or happened to check the phone. It never occurred to them that they would be freed during the time they were in the bathroom.

And they just warmed their pancakes, and ate them amidst stolen kisses and looks and a little bit of chiding about forks in shoulders, never knowing that they could now just very easily walk out the door if they wanted to.

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_**That's it! Long one, my longest yet for this story. If you're still reading it, I hope you enjoyed it. I'd love to hear your thoughts.**_

_**Have a great day!**_


	15. Talking and Plotting

_**Wow...so many of you seemed to like the fork-stabbing incident from the last chapter. Thanks! I was worried about that one, but I guess a lot of you have the same (somewhat warped) sense of humor that I do sometimes. And Steve1961, I refer to something you said in your review, so good premonition type of catch. I was going to put the reference in the last chapter, but I decided to hold it until this chapter.**_

**_Here's another relatively long chapter for you. Oodles of thanks to all who reviewed the last chapter; I love each and every review and appreciate them so much!_**

_**Disclaimer: I don't own or have any rights to the characters.**_

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Pancakes were finished and dishes were washed.

That is, more specifically, pancakes were finished by both of them, but dishes were washed and dried only by Kate, because Castle said that he was, obviously, injured, and there was no way he could use that arm to lift even a sponge.

She leaned back, dirty plate in her hand. "So let me get this straight. You have a...a..._thing_ on your shoulder that's little more than an abrasion, and somehow it's rendered your entire arm unsuable?"

He pursed his lips and looked up in the air as he was thinking, and then he nodded. "Yup, that about sums it up," he agreed with a smile.

She glared at him, giving him a withering look that said that she thought his excuse was ridiculous. "Lame, Castle, really lame."

He rubbed his shoulder gently. "Well, yes, Beckett, my arm actually _is_ quite lame, if you use the literal meaning of the word. It means disabled, so that movement is difficult or impossible. That describes my situation pretty well, don't you think?" he asked as he leaned against the bathroom vanity.

She just rolled her eyes at him and shook her head as she continued to dry one of the plates.

"Hey," he defended himself, "you stick a fork in me, and I'm done. Done doing dishes, that is," he told her with a wink, obviously pleased with his wit.

She turned her head to him slowly and gave him a pithy look. She waited one beat, two beats, three beats as she narrowed her eyes at him. "You're really proud of yourself for thinking that one up, aren't you?"

"Well, actually, yes. Yes, I am." And then he grinned at her.

She just shook her head and, after grabbing the now clean dishes, exited the bathroom to put them back in their closet kitchen.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

"So, assuming we get out today..." she mused as she leaned against him on the top of the freshly made bed a bit later.

"Hmmm?" he murmured back, leaning his head back with his eyes closed, just taking a moment to relish the feel of her cuddled up against him so willingly, so lovingly.

He felt a finger lightly poke him in his ribs and he opened his eyes. "Are you even listening to me?" she asked him.

"Well...yeah. This...us...we're still pretty new to this, so sometimes I just stop to think..." Cognizant of his fork-stab wound, he did a one-shoulder shrug. "I'm just trying to savor the moment. Appreciate...this. You being here. With me. Like this." The arm that was draped over her gave her a little squeeze to punctuate his statement.

"Even though I'm not naked or wearing revealing lingerie?" she prompted teasingly, turning around to look at him.

"Oh, don't get me wrong...I like those times too. A lot." He smiled a crooked smile at her, pure Castle, and she couldn't help but give him one back. "But this is nice for...normal. A new normal." Then he had a thought that made the grin drop off of his face. "Right?"

"Us? Like...this?" she asked, waving her hand between the two of them.

He nodded, still looking for confirmation.

"Yeah. A new normal," she agreed. "Although I'm not really sure what that is."

He gave her a quick kiss. "That, and sitting here like this. And going out to dinner now, or maybe see a play now and then. Or maybe the next time Forbidden Planet is at the Angelica, we could go see it again and cuddle this time. So things like that, but yeah, _definitely_ more of the naked or revealing lingerie parts too."

"So you want to...date?"

"Date?"

"Movies, dinner, plays...aren't those all 'date' types of things to do? So yes, are you saying you want us to date?"

Yes, he supposed they were doing something like that now. But using the word 'date' just sounded so...preliminary. Loose. Casual. Not permanent. And none of those terms described what he felt for her. "Well...no...not really."

She sat up quickly and looked at him in surprise. That was not what she expected him to say. "No?"

He immediately missed her warm weight against his body. He was the one who'd just needed confirmation from her, and now from the look on her face, she was the confused one and needed confirmation from him. "I mean, no, we can't really _date_ date because we're already past that stuff anyway, right? Dating implies...casual, I guess. We're more than that. My feelings for you are _not_ casual. Haven't been for a while."

"Well, what do you call it then?" she pressed, temporarily ignoring the feelings comment. "What are we doing if we're not dating?"

He made a comical face as if he was contemplating the solution to world peace, rather than just trying to put a name on the peace they'd finally found with each other. Then he nodded a few times before saying, "Okay, I've got it."

"Good, enlighten me. And don't you dare say that I'm your prisoner of love or something hokey like that again, or I may have to shoot you when I get my gun back."

"No, it's better, and much more applicable to our situation. Are you ready?"

She really wanted to roll her eyes at his stalling (again), but she restrained herself and simply nodded.

"Okay. We're in a relationship. You're my...significant other." He smiled after that, obviously proud of himself.

She thought about that for a moment. Somehow, the word 'relationship' had more of a serious connotation than 'dating'. He was right; dating did sound more casual. With what they'd been through since they'd known each other, and especially with what had happened between them in the last few days, she couldn't really call them casual. And, she realized, she didn't want them to be considered casual. "Relationship," she said, trying out the word, biting her bottom lip as she thought about how the word sounded, about _them_. "We're in a relationship."

"Yes?" he questioned, unable to gauge her full feelings on the subject from her thoughful look.

Slowly, she gave him a little smile and a nod, which he found himself mirroring. "Yes." Her word eased the tension that he didn't know he'd been feeling. He was sure of his feelings, had been sure of them for a while. But this whole thing with them...together...it was still so new. And doubts were bound to crop up, as he just found out. Insecuries could rear their ugly heads at any time.

"Actually," she continued, "I suppose we have been for a little while. Just a platonic, hidden one."

He thought about that for a moment. "I guess you're right, and probably more than a little while. Lord knows I haven't—" He trailed off, suddenly conscious of where this conversation was going.

"Haven't what?"

"Nothing."

"Haven't what, Castle?" she prompted again, her voice a little more stern.

He sighed, not wanting to get into this, especially not now, but also knowing that she wouldn't let it go until he told her. "I haven't wanted anything to do with any other women in quite a while. I mean, before the rebound dates from the last few weeks."

She understood, thinking back all of those months; it hit her all at once. "You were waiting for me." He nodded, but gave her a little shrug as if to say 'no big deal'. Except...it was a big deal. He waited for her. She'd known it on some level, but now it hit her like a punch in the gut. And then to find out the truth the way that he had...oh, Rick.

She had another thought then, and she couldn't help but blurt it out. "But what about Serena Kaye? You were...interested..." She couldn't finish. She looked down, still remembering how it felt to see that interest that he had in the woman, and how, though it hurt, she knew she couldn't stand in the way if he wanted to pursue something with her when she couldn't be with him yet herself.

She felt him lightly touch her chin as he gently urged her to look at him again. "As a character study. She was intriguing...her life, her confidence, her knowledge. But not personally. Not like...that."

"You kissed her," she blurted out before she could stop herself.

"Only because I had to stall her." So much for his insecurities; obviously, she had them too. "Look, Kate...that's all in the past. I didn't want anyone else then. Just you. And you..." He was going to say 'didn't remember,' but now he knew that wasn't the case. But he'd, for the most part, come to terms with that, or at least was trying to, so he continued, "You weren't ready for that."

She shook her head. She understood his hesitation for what it was, and she addressed it head on before she could resort to old habits of talking around things. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you that I remembered. It made so much sense then, and now, I...it just doesn't make as much sense anymore."

"Hindsight is always 20/20. But now..." he pulled her back against him. "Let's just enjoy this. Can we do that for a while? Not worry about things in the past that aren't relevant now anyway?"

She laid against him willingly again, grabbing his hand with hers and holding it in a form of silent agreement. They relaxed for a while, and she realized that after her first comment, their conversation had totally derailed from its intended course. "So," she tried again, "assuming we get out today..."

"I'm getting a feeling of deja vu. Didn't we just have this conversation?"

"No, I _tried_ to have this conversation, but you started falling asleep on me—"

"Hey, _you're_ on _me_, and I was _not_ falling asleep."

"Not what I mean, and don't derail the conversation again. Assuming we get out of here today, what are we going to tell them? Our rogue band of kidnappers?"

"Tell them? Well, first I'm going to ground my daughter for the next twenty or thirty years. And maybe the next time Ryan does a cleanse, I'm going to put laxatives in his lime juice or whatever that vile green stuff was. And I'm going to special order some laxative donuts for Esposito."

With Castle's imagination, she was looking forward to seeing what punishments he could dream up for all of their captors. Although she thought he could come up with something better than laxatives or grounding of his daughter.

"And my mother...hmmmm..." he continued. "Oh, I've got it! I'll replace some of her makeup with some color changing makeup. I saw it in one of those airline magazines in the gag section. It looks normal, and then wham! A little while after you put it on, rainbow-city." And then he laughed in a really good imitation of a mad scientist.

Ah, Kate thought. That was more like the Castle she knew...and loved. The thought gave her a little smile. But she squashed the good feeling down to continue with the topic at hand because she knew how distracting the good feeling—and the man behind the good feeling—could be. "No, I mean, those are all good. Well, good in an amateur sense, anyway." She felt him pull back to look at her, and she sensed that he was about to protest her 'amateur' rating, but she cut him off as she sat up more and faced him again. "I mean, are we going to tell them that we're...together now? That we're in a...relationship?" She stuttered a bit over the word and the status because it just still sounded strange to her, especially after all this time.

She turned around to look at him then, and found a smile starting to bloom on his face. Evidently he liked the 'relationship' term, and it appeared that it superceded the 'amateur' comment enough to banish it from his mind. "Tell them?" he said dumbly.

"Yeah. You know, that what they intended to happen when they locked us in here together actually, uh, happened." And then Esposito's comment from days ago—when they were coming to the loft to 'rescue' Martha—stood out in her mind, and she groaned when she remembered it.

"What?"

She told him about her comment to Esposito and his strange demeanor after that. Well, it was strange to her then, now it made perfect sense.

"So Esposito..." he trailed off.

"Yeah. I just didn't realize it at the time."

"You know, despite the outcome, they still handcuffed me to a bed. And it wasn't nearly as pleasurable as when you did it." He caught an eyeroll from Kate after that comment. "And they put duct tape over my mouth. They really do deserve some kind of punishment."

She agreed. "It's not the outcome, it's the methods." He nodded, and they both were quiet then as they were thinking of how that punishment could happen.

"Hmmm..." he said finally, thinking out loud. "I suppose if they're expecting something, then maybe the best thing we could do for revenge would be to give them the opposite of what they expect."

"So...pretend like we're the opposite of together?"

He nodded with a devious smile. "Like you hate my guts."

She chewed on her lip as she looked at him coyly, reaching out a finger to run it down his chest seductively. "That might be kind of hard to do, especially after last night. And this morning."

Oh, what she could do to him. All it took was a little touch of her finger and a seductive look from her, and he was putty in her hands. Well, most of him was putty; other parts of him were becoming decidedly unputtylike. But his brain turned to mush as he looked at her, and he forgot his previous train of thought. Completely forgot it.

She raised up on her knees on the bed. "I think before we start pretending that we hate each other, we should maybe have one last reminder that we don't hate each other. What do you say, Rick?" she asked him, swooping her face in for a kiss. "But we should probably be quick about it, in case they come back to open the door." She licked her lips and leaned close to him before she asked, "Do you think you can handle a quickie, Ricky?"

His eyes got momentarily bigger as he realized what she'd just said, and he stared at her for a moment, just filing away in his memory banks the fact that Kate Beckett had just asked him for a quickie. Definitely a memory he'd be reliving.

Once he recovered, without a word, he crawled off the bed and walked over to the door, where he grabbed a nearby chair and placed it under the doorknob as a deterrent against anyone who might think to open the door. She had to give him points for that one. Then he walked a few steps toward the bathroom before he turned around, saying, "Are you coming, Beckett? If we're really going to have a quickie, then I think we should really...embrace the moment, and multitask." He waggled his eyebrows as he said, "Shower quickie. Get clean at the same time as..."

With a smile of her own, she got up off the bed to follow him. "Not a bad idea, Castle. Not a bad idea at all."

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

They ran around the room, putting their plan in place. Somehow, through running water and many low moans and muffled pants of pleasureful exertion, they were still able to come up with some ideas to make their story of new mutual hatred seem all the more plausible. Castle's shoulder fork-stab wound didn't seem to impede his efforts much, and Kate tried to give him a little grief for it until he kissed her into silence. But aside from that, there was something about talking about hating each other as their actions showed quite the opposite that made the whole experience just that much more...fulfilling. And that semblance of being opposing forces had so long been part of their relationship—even before they had a romantic relationship—that even with their minds on other things, they still managed to come up with a plausible set of supposed clues to leave for their captors to make them wonder and worry about what had actually gone on between the detective and the writer during their several days locked in the room.

That was how they worked best—seemingly butting heads but really being totally in sync to work seamlessly toward a common goal. And that give-and-take obviously hadn't changed despite the change in their relationship.

One of those impromptu ideas, though painful and totally accidental to start, would actually prove to be one of their best 'clues'. After it was set in place, though Beckett still was smarting from the sting, she had to admit that it looked really good. In a bad sort of way. And the fact that Castle tried to make her hurt go away by his own unique methods wasn't all bad either...

So they sat. They sat through the early afternoon, and they decided to eat a light lunch, all the while keeping an eye on the door (now without the chair) for any sign of movement.

But there was nothing. Not in the early afternoon, not in the late afternoon.

They tried to sit apart, preparing for their ruse as they expected their captors to burst in on them at any moment. But as the hours wore on with no word from anyone else, they got antsy and they eventually gravitated closer to each other. They stole into the closet quite a few times for stolen kisses and mini-make-out sessions, thinking that at least the closet would give them one layer of warning if someone were to finally come into the room to free them. But still, nobody came and they could see by the position of the sun in the sky that it was getting later in the day. Where were they?

Rick, despite Kate asking more than once, steadfastly refused to use the Hello Kitty emergency phone to call his daughter. He still figured that she'd be waiting around, expecting him to whine about his situation, and he did _not _want to give her the satisfaction. And the last time they talked about the phone, Rick got an evil gleam in his eye as he announced one other idea that he'd had to set the stage for their kidnapper revenge. When he explained it, her eyes got big too, but then she agreed. The idea did have merit.

But still, nothing. They waited more, and grew more agitated, wondering when they'd be let out. Beckett knew she had to work the next day, and they guys knew that too, so she was certain she'd be let out. She knew there would be no way they'd want to explain to Gates that she wasn't at work because the guys, Martha and Alexis had locked her in a room in Castle's loft and she was still there.

In the early evening, Rick was playing with the picture app on his phone when all of a sudden, he yelped and threw it up in the air. Luckily, Kate was close enough and with her quick reflexes managed to snag it, but she almost felt like tossing it away when she saw what was on the screen.

"You have a text," she said, somwhat in awe.

"How do I have a text? Texting doesn't work. They disabled it."

"Guess not. Or they reenabled it. But whatever...you have a text. And you'd better read this," she told him.

She gingerly passed the phone to him and watched when his jaw dropped as he read the message. "Uh oh," he said.

"Is she right?" she asked.

They both looked at the message from Alexis again, just to confirm that it really did say what they thought it said. _"Are you guys EVER going to come out? Door's only been unlocked for the last five or six hours. What are you doing in there? Wait, I don't want to know."_

"Only one way to find out," he said, and they both crept over to the door. Taking a deep breath, he turned the door handle and pulled, and the door came open silently. They both looked at each other in astonishment, and then looked out the door at the first view of the hallway that they'd had in three days.

"Oh, crap," she whispered. "You don't suppose they...when we were in the bathroom...in the shower?" She couldn't go any further with that thought.

"I don't know. I hope not," he said, looking like he didn't like the idea any better than she did. "But the door...the chair was blocking it," he said with relief.

She looked relieved for a moment too, but then said, "What if they tried it and couldn't get in, and figured out we blocked it? And...why we blocked it."

"Way to burst my bubble, Beckett."

"Great, Castle! What do we do now? How can we possibly explain staying in here even with the door unlocked? Especially if we supposedly hate each other?"

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_**Thanks for reading!**_

_**I'd love to hear what you think of this chapter.**_

_**As you can see, I have a bit of a ruse planned, or they did, until they realized that the door had really been open for a while. But now what will they do? It's fun for me to hear your ideas about where you think this is going, so drop me a line if you want to.**_

_**Don't worry; this ruse (if we get there) won't go on nearly as long as the one in 'The Plan'. But so many of you have asked for a ruse, and to see them out of the room and confronting their captors, that I decided to answer you and do something along those lines. Now, I'm just planning if I should wrap this up quickly, like in one more chapter, or go for another several chapters. I have ideas for either way, so now it's just a matter of figuring out the best thing for this story.**_

_**I'm xxGoogiexx on twitter and tumblr.**_


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